I just asked the same thing because I've had that experience too. I'm curious: are you usually working on things that require close collaboration between team members?

My hunch is that standups are pretty useless on teams where each developer is working on an independent change where there isn't much opportunity to get blocked by teammates aside from waiting for code reviews and the like. That's most of the teams I've worked on, and the standups inevitably turn into a verbal form of, "Hey manager, here's my status report for the day even though you already know all this because I've already said it in Slack," because you have nothing to ask of the other people on the team but you're required to say something every day.

Where I've seen standups work effectively is when an engineer has a bit of context on a problem that someone is dealing with, or an insight that might unblock someone. I've had many times I've mentioned in an (async, written in slack) standup status update, and someone's chimed in with something like "Oh, I've dealt with that before - let's pair for 10 minutes so I can walk you through some gotchas".

Another plus for me personally is that it has a focusing effect on myself as a developer - if I say I'm going to get something done in standup, I'm going to force myself to focus on that task, and not get distracted by something else unless it's really important. I can see how that's a totally personal thing though - I need to have some sort of external "deadline", even if it's self-imposed and soft, to keep me focused.

All of the above can be solved with async updates in Slack though, and that's probably actually a better medium. Having folks get in the same room seems a little pointless to me, especially when you have remote folks and timezones are an issue.

The problem I've had with async updates is that they often get ignored because everyone that could help is busy at the time, so you still need the actual standup to just remind them about it. How do you get around this?

I don't have a great solution for that, really, other than ensuring that updates are highly visible in a room where people are likely to read them and have a good culture around helping folks.

I've been in environments like the one you describe, and I think at the end of the day it's more of a cultural issue than something that can be solved using a tool.

this ^^^^^^^^^^^

I get around it by pinging people directly (usually I reply to my question as a thread in Slack and @-mention them, so the main channel doesn't get cluttered with my reminder) if a couple hours go by without a response. Still usually faster than waiting until the next day to ask at standup.

   My hunch is that standups are pretty useless 
   on teams where each developer is working on 
   an independent change where there isn't much 
   opportunity to get blocked by teammates aside 
   from waiting for code reviews and the like

Personal anecdote, but I like to know what my teammates are working on even if we're not collaborating directly.

I could (and do) read their commits and PRs, and standups are not a replacement for that, but I think you can usually get a better idea just by chatting for a few minutes each day.

I view the cost of a daily standup as very small (they should be only a few minutes long!) so while some would call the benefits modest, I think the "time spent vs. value obtained" ratio is still very good.

For me the cost is much less about, "It's just a few minutes long" and much more about, "Having to get up from my desk and talk to people about their projects kills my flow state." It's a short meeting but it's still a meeting and has the same effect on focused thinking as a longer meeting. Losing focus is totally fine if there's benefit to it, but for standups where I neither learn nor teach anything new, it's all cost and no benefit.

I too like knowing what my teammates are working on, but I already get that from the team's Slack channel where people talk about what they're doing as they do it.

I agree about the frustration of having my flow disrupted, but my like of daily standups is related to my experience that they create an overall reduction in interruptions.

Of course, that's my experience. Others may have had different experiences and I respect that. If you formerly had 0 interruptions per day and now you have 1 interruption per day, that would be frustrating. I would also like to work where you work!

>I view the cost of a daily standup as very small (they should be only a few minutes long!) so while some would call the benefits modest, I think the "time spent vs. value obtained" ratio is still very good.

My problem with a morning standup is that it completely destroys my productivity if I come in early and really get cracking on a problem, then have to stop and task-switch. I'd much rather make it optionally asynchronous.

Yeah, I feel the same way sometimes regarding the timing. I don't think they should be in the morning. The older I get, the more of a morning person I am... that's my productive time.

I personally would rather do those meetings in the early afternoon, like before or after lunchtime.

Pretty sure there are plenty of studies that show early afternoon is our least productive time anyway.

(TBH, and I'm being completely serious here, my ideal schedule would also involve siesta time in the early afternoon)

Standups are for "weakest" devs, to break silo of "I am working on my thing don't bother me".

"weakest" devs - you know not everyone is outspoken and will communicate without issues, new young devs will be afraid to ask an experienced guy. Some experienced guys (also "weak") will be assholes to young devs for asking questions. Just getting team to talk to each other at least once a day is positive. Unless you work only with senior people who are experienced and don't have any issues talking to each other, I would still try to get people to gather for standup.

The best dev on my team is also a very reluctant communicator.

This guy is a beast at getting things done, and is a good communicator once you get him talking. Overall, a joy to work with. However, you do typically have to make the first step. He kinda stays dark without scheduled meetings.

To me the key is to keep the daily standups VERY brief. They help the "reluctant" communicators. And they don't cost the "active" communicators very much time.

I am a fairly "active" communicator myself. I'm gonna spend 15 minutes talking to my freaking team every day anyway. So a brief 10-15 morning standup is no problem at all.

Weaker? Senior? We have something to learn from every one.

Nobody should be an asshole. Nobody should be working alone.

Both of these are great ways to create a really toxic working environment, please don't perpetuate it.

Counterpoint: comment was fine and non-toxic, describing siloing as weak no matter who's doing it is an accurate and a pretty tame criticism, and ensuring that's not happening is indeed the only real point of scheduled daily stand-ups. As long as we're gonna have the term "senior"—and we do have it—I'd abso-friggin'-lutely reserve it for people who can avoid siloing without a formal, daily ritual, and a team of such folks don't need stand-ups. Don't worry about it, ozim.

> Nobody should be an asshole. Nobody should be working alone.

Ozim advocated neither being an asshole nor working alone, so is perpetuating neither. Standups have a place and it's to fight both of those problems, when some ICs on a team can't handle it on their own.

How would you express that thought, to get through to a person I replied to who wrote he has 15 years of experience and he did not see any value in standups?

Do you think he is not a senior person? Is he a bad person for pointing out his years of experience? Maybe I am bad person trying to express in BOLD that there are people with less experience, social anxiety, assholes and we have to work with all those personalities. With strong emphasis that standups are good tool for getting rid of toxic work environment and getting teams together.

I agree that the whole typical 'what did you do yesterday' is indeed lacking value.

The standups are mostly just pointing the stories that need pointing, covering any questions and picking the pairs for the days work (pivotal is 100% pair programming). The meetings can be done within 5-15 minutes at most.

I'm currently living at a yoga retreat center in the mountains of Vietnam. I can see from the practice that the first few minutes of silence is good to clear the mind. I think having standups is a similar good way to start the day with a positive attitude.

I also find value in standups, but the problem is they constrain the team to some daily meeting time. For example, I start work around 6am. A co-worker does morning kid duty and tends to start closer to 10am. There is no good way to start our days at the same time, and there really is no need.

What we have been trialing for awhile is a simple Slack checkin. Everyone reads them when their day starts, and if there are any questions or comments a Slack thread is started from the checkin message. It's worked quite well.

Pivotal solved that by requiring everyone to work the same exact hours. It is a bit military in that regard, but it works for them. You don't get a job there unless you buy into it. Their reasoning is more around their culture of pair programming.

It sounds like you have found a solution that works for your company and that is great! The way I look at it is that as long as we are shipping software around the time when we say we are going to and the quality is high and people aren't killing themselves (weekends) to make it all happen, all good. =)

First off, I'd say that a good daily standup meeting shouldn't be more than 15 minutes. If it's longer than that, you are probably getting bogged down in details that don't belong there.

Let's be generous and call the "real" cost 30 minutes of productivity... 15 minutes for the actual meeting/call, and 15 minutes of context switching cost.

That is 6% of an 8-hour workday. You can still code up to 94% of the time, not bad. And I think it has been shown many times that most developers don't really pound out code for 8 hours per day. We might work 10+ hours per day but it's not necessarily 10+ hours of coding. So I feel the cost of these daily meetings is very small.

What are the benefits?

1. For one thing, it is good to know what the rest of your team is working on and what challenges they are facing. This jogs a lot of useful conversations in my experience, where Developer A turns out to have some experience in the area in which Developer B is stuck. You may be thinking, "good teams communicate and can do this literally any time... why schedule a daily meeting for it?"

Yes. If your team is operating and communicating flawlessly, sure, standups are redundant. However, I've been at this for 22 years and this is not typically the case, and the brief daily meetings are a real upgrade.

2. These meetings help prevent "drive-by shootings." That's what I call it when management randomly stops by your desk and wants to know what you're doing and if you're stuck and wants to see your work in progress. I hate hate hate hate these. I would rather just briefly chat with leadership on a predictable basis. And when I am leadership, I would prefer not to subject my team to these "drive-by shootings." A lot of teams are already paying this cost, which I feel is much greater than the cost of a brief morning standup. Again, if your team is already communicating at a super high level, maybe you don't need standups. I feel this is not the case for a majority of teams.

3. For remote teams, these give folks a chance for some regularly scheduled face time and chitchat. We kept our morning call to < 15 minutes today and talked about Star Wars. As a remote worker myself I truly cherish this. If you have a remote team I would call video chat standups more or less a requirement.