[agentultra]

> Daily stand-ups are a cornerstone of agile software development

A cornerstone of micro-management, at best.

Daily stand-ups can work when there is no manager present and it's just the people working on what they need to get done.

[tamimio]

Thank you! No matter how I explain this simple idea that standups are nothing but micromanagement, it never rings a bell. They might work in very limited situations and scopes, but they are never a generic framework to follow, and I blame Silicon Valley for normalizing it. What is worse is some companies try to force it in engineering work, and not just the software part of engineering, where you could spend a whole two weeks researching some topic. I remember in a previous job a novice manager (who only managed few coops before) tried to force it in a company that built robotics, and later I explained to him that they don't add any value let alone increase productivity. He took it personally and it was the crack that eventually was the reason why I left the company, despite me loving the technical work part.

[dkoprowski]

In my setup there is no manager there, only me as a team leader but I'm also one of the developers at the same time.

[ls-a]

I agree. The best experience i had was with a startup that had zero video calls and audio calls were rare.

[Shorn]

"micro-management" is not a useful concept, it's just a though-terminating cliche - let's get specific.

The problem with bad stand-ups is usually that they're just "personal status updates" by another name. They're abused as a way for team lead/project manager to "get a feel" for what individuals on the team are doing. Bad managers do this, because they're bad at their jobs. It's literally their job to know what people are doing, where they're at in their various tasks, what's going on with the project. They should be doing that all day, every day - when they're not "managing up". Gathering info in a 15 minute standup is both too short a feedback cycle and too long and nowhere near high enough bandwidth. It's also one of the major reasons stand-ups frequently go off the rails and end up taking so long, in badly run projects. Stopping those derailments is actually supposed to be one of their jobs and should be one of their main priorities during the stand up.

If you're stand-up involves going around the team, one person at a time asking "what did you do yesterday, what are you doing today" - that's a bad stand-up.

Stand-ups should be run from the sprint board - you run through all open tickets for the sprint, asking whoever is assigned to that ticket "what's up with that?" Once you've gong the through the tickets, you're done. No looking forward to next sprint - that's for backlog grooming and planning sessions. No looking backward, that's for retros.

Don't get to talk during the stand-up? Then WTF are you even working on, and why isn't a story in the sprint? That's a question the manager should be asking and resolving - privately, outside of the standup.

Stand-ups are for "visibility of the team, for the team". Not for managers or other wanna be management.

Stand-ups are for telling your teammates "i unstuck this ticket this way, if that's an issue or there's a better way, hit me up after the standup" or "I'm going to be working on X and I don't know anything about that; anyone who can help me, hit me up after the standup".

If your stand-ups aren't like that they're bad stand-ups. Because your manager sucks. Don't worry - most managers suck. Deal with it, get over it; and stop blaming your tools.

[agentultra]

micromanage (verb): control every part, however small, of (an enterprise or activity).

Managers who insist on stand-ups, insist on being present in them, and insist on managing the the backlog of tasks, assigning tasks, and forcing developers to estimate each one... are micromanaging.

No amount of, "I'm the friendly manager you can trust!" is going to melt the ice that your presence, as a manager, brings into a standup. You control salaries, promotions, and the stress levels of everyone there. It's going to be a conflict every time some one pushes back on your demands. Everything devolves into a status update meant to save face rather than be honest. It's wholly a waste of time.

> Stand-ups are for "visibility of the team, for the team". Not for managers or other wanna be management.

I agree.

Standups are a whole different game when it's a group of developers with a goal who need each other to meet it.

A good manager trusts their team to do this work themselves. If that means standups, cool. If they only need to meetup once a week as a group and people meet impromptu based on what they're working on... fine. As long as the team is shipping and meeting it's goals and milestones, all gravy.

[esafak]

It really depends on how you do it. A standup can just be a way to socialize with your team, and share ideas.

[ok123456]

That's the opposite of what it's for. It's for communicating what's stopping progress. If everything is going fine, it's over.

[esafak]

It's for whatever you want it to be for.