[fire]

> This only works when you trust your team members. This means absolutely nobody who can fire me on the spot, not my supervisor, not my skip, not the CEO/CTO/VP should be on the call.

not sure how I'd've ever justified suggesting engineering standup without our engineering manager present

[mrwizrd]

The other side of this is when the EM's presence is actually a negative, so them not turning up means people can relax. If "no blockers" isn't enough, then it's my job to get the information I need without it feeling like a chore. If I have no choice but to run a meeting called "standup" every day, and we're all on the same page already, I'll take "no blockers" and then have a chat for ten minutes over a coffee. Taking it easy once in a while helps everyone feel a little less "cog in the machine".

[mathgorges]

It sounds like your dev team isn't very empowered.

In the companies I work at we can create whatever ceremony our team deems nessesary as long as we're meeting our metrics.

[mcny]

Not just the dev team but even the "product owner" gets blind sided in "small" and "agile" companies.

The CEO or someone high up the food chain sees a defect and now zomg the sky is falling. It has to be fixed nao, prioritization be damned. That's what I meant by nobody from the above list can be a product owner. The whole point of having sprints is so things can't be added to a sprint mid-sprint. Maybe there are extenuating circumstances but they should a. really be extenuating circumstances and b. should come through the (clearly nominal) product owner.

[stakhanov]

> ...isn't very empowered. ...as long as we're meeting our metrics.

"Empowered to meet metrics" still doesn't sound like a very enlightened philosophy to me.

[hotnfresh]

What’s… the EM there to do?