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Why I Hate SCRUM Daily Stand-up Meetings
July 23, 2012 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: SCRUM
Why I Hate SCRUM Daily Stand-up Meetings
By Laurent Kubaski
I’ve been doing SCRUM stand-up meetings for 2 years before switching to a pre-sales role, and I’m going to tell you why I hated this.
Disclaimer: please keep your “you don’t understand what SCRUM is” comments for yourself. I understand the concept behind SCRUM daily stand-up meetings: it’s just that I don’t like them and I think that there are other ways to achieve the same results (it’s called “common sense”).
Let’s all happily meet in the morning ! (late people will be crucified)
First, the meeting is supposed to begin every morning at the same time. Why in the morning? Because “it helps set the context for the coming day’s work“. The issue is that developers – in France anyway – don’t like being told when to arrive in the morning: you arrive early, you leave early, you arrive late, you leave late !
But not anymore: with the SCRUM daily meetings, everyone needs to arrive more or less at the same time every morning (talk about freedom !). And if you arrive too early, you just wait for everyone while checking your favorite websites.Why? Because it takes a while for you to get “in the zone” … and you don’t want to be interrupted during that time right?
Did you clean your room honey?
Then, let’s talk about the famous 3 questions: “What did I do yesterday? What will I do today? Do I have any impediments?“
Sounds like what my mum was asking me when I was 5 years old. “Well, yesterday at school, I learned how to write my name. And today, I’m going to do some painting… but it’s hard: can you help me mommy?“.
On top of this, the need to setup a meeting to learn what my colleagues are working on feels so wrong to me. As the member of a team, I happen to know what people are working on just by talking to them during coffee/lunch breaks. Also, reading SVN commits comments is a great way to keep an eye on what people are doing.
Join up, they said! It’s a man’s life, they said!
Finally, I’ve always liked testing new software components. This is a way for me to learn new stuff, which is always exciting… and it keeps me motivated.
The problem with the daily meetings is that you cannot say things like: “well, yesterday I finished working on the billing component and today I’m going to spend a couple hours studying this new PDF rendering library because it looks very cool, even if this is something that has nothing to do with the backlog“.
So why don’t I like standup meetings?
- because I don’t want to be told exactly when to arrive in the morning.
- because I don’t want to wait for everyone to arrive before being able to really start coding.
- because I don’t need a daily meeting to know who is working on what (I’m a social guy and I use coffee breaks and lunches to talk about that !)
- because I don’t need to scream for help: I know who can help me if I’m stuck.
- because I’m big boy !
Laurent Kubaski is a pre-sales engineer at EntropySoft. You can read more from Laurent on his blog.
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4 people have left comments
As a Project Manager / SCRUM Manager, I can completely understand your frustration and I’ve experienced it before with team members I’ve worked with. A couple of thoughts came to mind as I read your article.
1. SCRUM / Agile is a tool which doesn’t fit every situation or problem. Just as a wrench could tighten a screw, but not as well as a screwdriver, SCRUM won’t work for every team or situation. Likewise, SCRUM offers many different artifacts and processes which are designed to make shipping software easier. If an artifact (Product Backlog, Burn-down charts, etc) or process (Daily Stand-up, Product Review, etc) doesn’t work for the team, it should be replaced with something that does.
2. Not everyone works the same hours within the day, but almost all have overlapping time beginning sometime in the morning hours or early afternoon hours. The Daily Stand-up should be used as a checkpoint not for the 8-5 work day, but for all work between this meeting and the next one. If a team member goes home at the end of the daily stand-up meeting and returns in the middle of the night to work until the next meeting, that’s fine. Waiting for the daily stand-up should never be a reason to sit idle.
3. This is a team process. For SCRUM (or any process for that matter) to be successful, you need the buy-in and active participation from team members. If someone is struggling with an aspect of the process, it is incumbent upon them to raise their concern and work pro-actively to address it. Perhaps they will have to adjust their work habits to conform, or perhaps accommodations can be made to ease the difficulty. The point is that everything should be discussed openly with the team so everyone can hear and work to solve the it together.
I love it!
All of the ceremonies in Scrum, as you’ll no doubt be aware, are put in place for good reasons. They must, though, work for the Team as a formal mechanism for reporting status to each other, as well as for the Scrum Master so that he has an opportunity to formally ask whether impediments are stopping the Team from progressing their work.
Many people, when stand-ups don’t work for them, complain and don’t attend. As a Scrum Coach, though, I use a ROTI activity (return on time invested) to understand what the Team feels can be done in order to make this ceremony (and others) better. Sometimes, it’s about the timing, sometimes it’s about the frequency. So, we do what ever we can do empower the Team to make it better. In essence, this approach is designed to be faithful to the inspect/adapt approach that underpins the success of a good Scrum team.
M
You are exactly right Laurent.
Many of the aspects of Scrum are childish and degrading, as well as nonsensical.
Coupled with the fact that there is no evidence that Scrum is any more effective than placebo, it’s time for people to reclaim their lives and stop putting up with this fad nonsense.
PA
Just a few things to point out:
* Scrum does not tell you when to arrive at work or when to do your standup meetings. You as a team should decide when the meeting happens. The Daily standup is however part of Scrum framework as you noted.
• Scrum does not ask you to wait for everyone to arrive before being able to really start coding. You can start coding whenever you chose to.
• Scrum is about the team therefore for the non-social folks on the team who hate coffee breaks I can either force them to be social and have coffee breaks or create a time for them to have these conversations with the rest of the team for 15 mins. However there is more to the Daily standup than coffee break conversation. You just may not be doing it right (like sex :) )
* Scrum ask that you remove impediments to your work screaming for help is one way or going to the right folks to get it removed is another. Ensuring that they Scrum Master, Product Owner and the team is aware of the impediment and actively working to remove it is also an equally effective way to get un-stuck.
• Scrum believes that you are indeed a big boy. Scrum ask that we let you make your own sprint committments without outside interference. Scrum as that you solve your own problems as a team in your own ways. Scrum as that we trust that you will do the right and best thing given the resources available to you and your ability.
Final notes:
* Following Scrum is simply. Living the Agile/Scrum principles is not as simply as following the framework. My guess is that your team may have implemented the framework but has not yet matured to following Agile principles/values
* If the Daily stand-up is not working for your team ask them to vote it out or propose modifications to improve the value you or the team gets out of it.
* Scrum does say that Business drives development therefore while it may give you some great pleasure to go look at the next shining thingy. You should ask yourself if this delivers value to the folks who help pay to keep the lights on.