> The whole thing was designed to give non-technical people more power over the ones who spent a lifetime honing their craftmanship. Standing around a table in the morning like assholes is not my idea of fun
The morning standup works great when it's all technical people. Keeps the team up to date with each others' progress and cuts down on "I spent three weeks being stuck" problems. Here's what I'm doing, and what I'm doing next, here's what I need a little help on.
When management get involved and the meeting starts with jira thrown up on the screen, sure, then it's terrible.
> If I want to spend 3 days learning a new framework that might do the product good, nobody cares. The only thing that counts is the endresult.
Here's the problem with that, not every schedule can take that 3 day lag, and someone has to make a decision about whether the product actually needs that new framework, or if it's going to be good enough without.
Maybe you're great at making those decisions, but I've seen many times when people end up going off down rabbitholes either just chasing something shiny, or through a sense of perfectionism that actually holds back release.
The morning coffee also works great. I really do not understand why there is a need for formalism here.
There is a meeting for what's planned for the week. There are the informal gatherings, like lunch. And if someone is stuck with something, he or she just asks for help. Easy as that.
It helps to give a forum to bring up being stuck, and an opportunity for others to hear it when they're not caught up in the middle of their own stuff.
Plus some people don't know when to ask for help, or when they're (for instance) duplicating effort.
Informal gatherings are not an appropriate venue - if this stuff only comes up then, then lunch gatherings are now work, and they're mandatory.
> Plus some people don't know when to ask for help, or when they're (for instance) duplicating effort.
This is the gist of it. Some people just have this (very sincere) belief that everyone else are clueless idiots and need to be nurtured, protected and helped. This is the spirit of our age, and Scrum in particular is just another manifestation of this belief.
I don't think everyone else is a clueles idiot, but there are a lot of them around.
If you have a small(ish) team of great people you can get a lot done with a very informal process. When you start to grow, or you're not necessarily hiring the best there are, you start to need this stuff.
And you don't always need the self-motivated, highly productive builders. Someone has to make small tweaks, pad out the automated test cases, maintain things, document etc etc.
The morning standup works great when it's all technical people. Keeps the team up to date with each others' progress and cuts down on "I spent three weeks being stuck" problems. Here's what I'm doing, and what I'm doing next, here's what I need a little help on.
When management get involved and the meeting starts with jira thrown up on the screen, sure, then it's terrible.
> If I want to spend 3 days learning a new framework that might do the product good, nobody cares. The only thing that counts is the endresult.
Here's the problem with that, not every schedule can take that 3 day lag, and someone has to make a decision about whether the product actually needs that new framework, or if it's going to be good enough without.
Maybe you're great at making those decisions, but I've seen many times when people end up going off down rabbitholes either just chasing something shiny, or through a sense of perfectionism that actually holds back release.