[bluGill]

Hows it going is too vague for many. Every ask a kid what they learned at school today? The answer is always "nothing", or silence. You need to ask a different question to get a good answer.

Which is one reason look for and ask different questions - if may break someone out of a rut.

[ironmagma]

If you answer "fine" to "how's it going" at standup, you aren't doing your job. It's not the prompt that needs to be specific, it's the engineer. If there are follow up questions, those can be asked, but asking the same three specific but thoughtless questions is just like having a form you have to fill out any time you make a change.

[prepend]

And kids aren’t doing their job by saying “nothing.”

It’s easier to change the questions to improve responses.

[ironmagma]

Yeah but that's to be expected because they are kids. If your coworkers act like children, that's a problem; they should act like adults because they should be adults. What's easy usually isn't what's right.

[prepend]

It’s not acting like children. It’s acting like humans.

If it’s easier to tweak questions or retrain everyone on my team, me included, I’m going with the easier path every time.

In this case easy is right because the specific question isn’t what’s important. What’s important is the community, discussion, and information shared.

[ironmagma]

I don’t think so. People know what the purpose of a standup is. You don’t even need a prompt to get one going, just have everyone go around in a circle and talk. They will do it automatically. Isn’t this basically the point of the article?