Standups and retrospectives.
this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
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May I ask why? This coming from the guy that has to facilitate them.
I'm especially curious about the stand-ups, since I have mixed feelings about retrospectives myself, they have their place and I think they play a part in a team's growth, but at the same time I'd rather just cancel them if I don't feel we'd get anything useful out of it and I don't want to hold a retro just because the process says so.
LE: Gonna just edit this to say thank you to the people who replied, gave me some new perspectives to think about.
I've just had some unlucky jobs, I think. Think 30-45 minute stand-ups for a team of 4, because the team lead or PM or "Scrum Master" feel like they have to prove their worth or something when ultimately the standup provides little to no value after the first 4 minutes (if any).
For jobs with a single ADO or Jira board, just look at our ticket status and comments.
I had one job that had daily stand-ups, a single ADO board, a requirement to send EOD status update emails, and a requirement to copy those updates to individual ticket comments EOD as well. I rage quit that job after 2 months because, frankly, that's absurd (it had other issues too).
My favorite standup at a job was one with 12-16 people and it took no more than ~6 minutes. It was no BS. The manager got his quick update notes across all supported clients (and separate ADO/Jira boards) and everyone got to go about their day. If you talked too long you'd get cut off.
But generally, daily stand-ups are just an interruption and a thing where I end up having to make up some BS to appease management. If my update is too long, team members hate it. If it's too short, management thinks I'm not doing any work.
As for retrospectives, of 15+ jobs in my life, only 2-3 of them ever even did anything with the feedback. Thus, it typically felt like a waste of 1-3 hours (yes one job had 3 hour retrospectives every two weeks, it was brutal). If none of the bads or nexts are ever going to happen, then don't pretend like we even have a voice.
If your stand-ups and retrospectives aren't BS, provide understood value, and don't waste time then I'm fine. But if all they exist for is to check a "we're agile!" box and allow management to flex, then I'd say it's doing the exact opposite of agile and merely annoying the engineers.
only 2-3 of them ever even did anything with the feedback
Exactly this. Nothing ever gets done with the feedback so what is even the point? Just to make it look like we care?
In my experience I feel like I'm basically talking to myself during the stand ups. No one is actually listening to anyone's status except maybe the scrummaster. I've said things in the standup to have coworkers be surprised later on when they're actually carried out.
Both are totally useless. I feel like screaming into the wind would be more useful.
When people message with a "hi" or "hello" and then say nothing more till I reply.
It annoys the hell out of me. Like, why can't you just say what you want. It wastes so much of my time and mental energy to switch back and forth while I wait for your reply after replying to your utterly useless hello.
One place I worked had end of shift meetings every day for the transition between third and first shift. First shift was supposed to get there 15 minutes early, but hardly ever did. This was a stand-up meeting at the end of an 8 hour shift. Look assholes, I'm tired and I wanna go home.Your disrespect of my time isn't helping my attitude toward this shit-hole company. Also, apparently, they didn't need to do this for second shift, because, you know, first shift is tired and wants to leave on time. Imagine that. I ended up quitting when they tacked on extra hours for us to work at the last minute during the week of Thanksgiving, so that effectively we'd still end up working 40 hours. What's the fucking point of holidays if you're just going to make us work more hours anyway?