Carrot and Stick: that doesn’t work on Programmers

Re:Carrot and Stick: that doesn’t work on Programmers by secstate on Saturday January 07, 2017 @03:06PM (#13346316)

I think the biggest challenge to your statement is "listen to what they want." Much of our modern psychology suggests people don't always know what they want, or don't want what they think they want. This is not meant as an insult, as it applies to all humans, whether they're a developer or not.

That means that listening is a huge part, but it's not enough to simply implement exactly what you hear they want.

All that said, I still totally agree with your examples.

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Re:Carrot and Stick: that doesn’t work on Programmers by SatvikBeri on Saturday January 07, 2017 @03:23PM (#13346404)

Yeah, you're totally right. Just literally listening is not enough–you have to ask questions, trace symptoms down to a root cause, and then come up with a good solution for that problem.

For example, one person requested that we make standups earlier, because they wanted to get them out of the way before getting into the zone. Another suggested making standups later, because they preferred to start work later in the day. Obviously these solutions as suggested were incompatible. So I tried to figure out what value we were getting from standups, and figured that it was worth experimenting with making them asynchronous using Slack. That worked really well, and is what we do now most of the time. (Occasionally, the team likes having in-person standups when in the middle of a tough series of bugfixes.)

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Re:Carrot and Stick: that doesn’t work on Programmers by gregshap on Saturday January 07, 2017 @04:52PM (#13346846)

Agreed! We had the same great experience with turning standup into an async chat room.

We're bicoastal so it's even harder to find a workable time, but I still got flack from outside the team. The improvement in outcomes was so huge that it was very easy to defend.

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Re:Carrot and Stick: that doesn’t work on Programmers by Drdrdrq on Saturday January 07, 2017 @03:55PM (#13346582)

> So I tried to figure out what value we were getting from standups, and figured that it was worth experimenting with making them asynchronous using Slack.

Could you please elaborate on what you are doing? We are facing similar problems so I would love to know more...

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Re:Carrot and Stick: that doesn’t work on Programmers by SatvikBeri on Saturday January 07, 2017 @05:12PM (#13346948)

I found that I was getting two things from standups: knowing what people were working on, and having a natural time to ask for/offer help. So (for now) we use Geekbot, and configured it to ask everyone on the team four questions each day:

–What did you accomplish yesterday?

–What is your top priority today?

–Where can you use help/what's blocking you?

–Which of these best describes your current level of challenge: bored, relaxed, excited, frustrated?

Everyone on the team is expected to read each other's standup reports (we have 7 people.)

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Re:Carrot and Stick: that doesn’t work on Programmers by user5994461 on Saturday January 07, 2017 @07:27PM (#13347500)

Isn't it too much to have this every day?

I've found that asking people every day incentivized them to write about anything and invent stuff just to fill up the question.

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Re:Carrot and Stick: that doesn’t work on Programmers by SatvikBeri on Saturday January 07, 2017 @07:55PM (#13347578)

All the questions are optional. It's a little more than my team would like, and a little less than I would like to ask each day, so I think it's a fair compromise.

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Re:Carrot and Stick: that doesn’t work on Programmers by Drdrdrq on Sunday January 08, 2017 @02:55AM (#13348815)

Thanks for explaining! I am not sure I would want to it this way because in my experience people tend to avoid "needless" tasks (such as reading on other people's progress :)), but it's good to know nevertheless.

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Re:Carrot and Stick: that doesn’t work on Programmers by AznHisoka on Saturday January 07, 2017 @09:34PM (#13347919)

When i did something like this in my prior company I did not care at all what others wrote. i would lie to my manager that i read it but i still did not care.

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Re:Carrot and Stick: that doesn’t work on Programmers by secstate on Saturday January 07, 2017 @03:37PM (#13346468)

Exactly! And kudos on figuring out a system that accomplishes the goal (what's everyone up to), but works well for the most people.

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Re:Carrot and Stick: that doesn’t work on Programmers by user5994461 on Saturday January 07, 2017 @07:25PM (#13347498)

My experience was to remove the daily standup. Best decision ever.

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