[don_draper]

I haven't done standup in 6 months and I just feel generally better. Where I work you just report to the tech lead every 2 or 3 weeks. So much nicer than daily standups. Could you imagine other professions doing what we do?

[intoverflow2]

>Could you imagine other professions doing what we do?

I worked in advertising before a tech startup and the whole rigmarole of standup, agile, scrum whatever felt like being back at school to me. Couldn't really understand why as professionals people couldn't be trusted to just get on with their work and know whats going on.

Had a chat with a colleague and mentioned this is the first place I've worked where you had to do this stuff and they couldn't believe it wasn't what was done in literally every workplace (this was their first job out of uni, but they were 3 years into it).

[DLight1]

The point of the standup meeting is not to report to someone, but to communicate between team members.

[dasmoth]

Where I work you just report to the tech lead every 2 or 3 weeks.

Sounds pretty much perfect to me (although I also know people who would go stir-crazy like this...)

Can I ask: what sort of company is this? Dedicated software operation or a tech department inside a company doing something else?

[don_draper]

It's an engineering company that does math/science stuff along with regular software development.

[matthewmacleod]

Where I work you just report to the tech lead every 2 or 3 weeks. So much nicer than daily standups.

This might work for some organisations, products or development styles. In my team of five, over a two or three week period we might have delivered half a dozen customer-facing features or changes, and the team will generally be working quite collaboratively on those. It would not be feasible to 'report to a tech lead every 2 or 3 weeks'.

Could you imagine other professions doing what we do?

Yes, and I think in some cases they would gain a lot from it.

[sheepmullet]

Are your developers children who won't work together unless they are micromanaged by a lead?

I meet with my manager once per month to ensure our goals are aligned. We tend to spend 1-2 full days together so we can "go deep".

In contrast I work with other developers almost every day.

[matthewmacleod]

Are your developers children who won't work together unless they are micromanaged by a lead?

Obviously not, and as I pointed out earlier it's clear that different organisational styles can work well for different teams and that's fine – please don't lower the tone of the conversation like that. My development team are experienced professionals, and because we are organised in a different manner does not mean that we are 'children'.

I'll give you some background which will maybe clarify our particular structure (that's not to say that there are no alternatives). My current project team is five people – three developers including me, a product owner/manager, and the 'head of development' who works across multiple project teams and serves in the organisational/administrative/scrum-master role. There is no 'lead' to report to, and while our 'head of development' is nominally the line manager of the development team, she is not responsible for product delivery and is there to provide general support and problem-solving rather than take progress reports.

We have a daily stand-up which lasts around 5 minutes (the other two developers are exclusively remote); 'sprints' last two weeks; each sprint starts with an hour-long planning session in which we as a group figure out the priorities with input from the product owner, figure out what technical work is required, and break it into deliverable and testable features. Then we go away and work for two weeks, demo what we did to the wider company, and spend an hour together doing the whole retrospective thing where we review what went well/bad/needs more work.

Everything is collaborative; I don't have to 'spend 1-2 full days together so we can "go deep"' with anybody, because all interested parties are consistently involved in the process. It works well, doesn't involve micromanagement, and everybody is happy. Obviously this is not the only way to run a team, but it's also not invalid or childish.

I'm sure you can understand that I'm kind of tired of bad teams with bad process blaming it on 'Agile' when their real problem is that they have poisonous developers or other underlying issues.

[sheepmullet]

You originally wrote:

> It would not be feasible to 'report to a tech lead every 2 or 3 weeks'.

Yet there is nothing in your workflow that demands a daily standup either.

So really you are saying "We find standups helpful". That's a far cry from alternatives are not feasible.

[JabavuAdams]

> Are your developers children who won't work together unless they are micromanaged by a lead?

This is black and white thinking. It depends on the personality type, but many developers have a tendency to go down research rabbit-holes or to think only about the tech and not about the business.

Therefore, a more frequent calibration to business goals may be necessary.

[sheepmullet]

> but many developers have a tendency to go down research rabbit-holes or to think only about the tech and not about the business.

So it is a trust issue.

Surely you can see how this makes people feel they are being treated like children?

[martijn_himself]

In some other professions it would most likely lead to strikes :).

[a_imho]

Well, I saw sales and HR do stand ups and retros mustered by the agile officers. It was imperative that scrum must fit all. Scrums of scrums everywhere. The agile singularity was reached.