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Stickies must be seen to be moving!! Process over people!!
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A daily progress meeting of any kind is a sign that you have a team with trust issues.
A team with trust issues can never reach the top of Cog's ladder[^] - in fact it is a daily reinforcement of the "Why we're here stage".. which is also why the type 3's that want to be more effective are having to leave.
IMO - You need a virtual and asynchronous stand-up which is a progress dashboard and a wiki, and stewards to keep any non players off the pitch.
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Yeah there's some kind of "hybrid" work management evolving in companies around here. They pick up all the buzz words like Scrum/Standup/Agile etc and mix it with traditional work-bullying techniques.
They want to squeeze work out every hour.
We work across different locations. Some of team members are in other location. When these people spend multiple hours in social networks , or over phone with family. The directors there pings me and verifies with me if all these guys are properly "loaded".
I'm really getting pissed off with these terminologies.
Thanks for the link. It's wonderful! Never came across this one.
Starting to think people post kid pics in their profiles because that was the last time they were cute - Jeremy.
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Sounds like your scrum master and/or agile coach need to help the management along - you know understanding servant leadership, supporting the team, reading information radiators (especially if you use tfs teach them what cuflow does as well as burn down).
modified 24-Mar-16 9:36am.
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Vunic wrote: They want to squeeze work out every hour.
Which is death to a productive creative developer.
Liking to think that I am a number 3(in your list) - if you looked at me at work you might think that I am not doing very much sometimes, but I am thinking.
Then when my hands hit the keyboard I am very productive on the non-neuronal physical plane - I have never been late on a project yet(at least not for any reasons based on decisions I have made).
So when the boss sometimes wants to know what the team has been up to on a daily basis, there is the sound of a collective sight from everyone. Explaining that all the projects have been delivered on time and that we have provided more than has been asked for is not enough - we have to to seen to be busy all the time too.
Did I say that I was leaving my current job on Thursday next week?
In my experience of IT work, I have come to the conclusion that the vast majority of people who manage IT teams who do not have 10+years of developer/Ops experience are not fit for the job(there is a minority who are just gifted, empathetic and intelligent people who can pull it off).
This said if everything is very structured and the team is really using an agile methodology then there is no reason why the creative thinkers should not be able to factor this in as part of the daily report in - it's fine to say ' I am still investigating the possibilities of xyz framework'.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
modified 24-Mar-16 10:23am.
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Duncan Edwards Jones wrote: A daily progress meeting of any kind is a sign that you have a team with trust issues.
Not at all. In my last job we had a team in India that was working on a project. Our daily meeting is the reason we had such a successful offshore experience. Most people think I'm lying when I say that we did offshore successfully because no one has been able to do it. It wasn't anything special, just a daily meeting to see where they are at and what issues they might have.
But, as SCRUM teaches, it's important to keep your tasks to at most 1 days worth of work.
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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I agree there is definite value in stand up when a team is location split. We all know that isn't ideal, but sometimes it's necessary and a quick sync between the team just lets everyone share where we need to go.
I would note it's very easy for these things to morph to being out of team control, sounds like Vunic is having this issue.
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GStrad wrote: I would note it's very easy for these things to morph to being out of team control, sounds like Vunic is having this issue.
You're right. You need a good Scrum Master or someone who can make sure meetings stay on task. It isn't that hard.
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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The only issue I see is the directors' attitude. I have not complained about any other things here.
And stand up meetings also, Im against doing it mechanically at a specific time daily. Forcing someone to come on time implicitly. And to see if all are always loaded. No matter its short or long meetings, I'm for all these on need basis.
Starting to think people post kid pics in their profiles because that was the last time they were cute - Jeremy.
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Apologies if I read to much into some of your comments about directors behaviour I read it that the daily is being used a space to monitor the teams 'loading'.
It does sound like the directors attitude is stinky and I would expect scrum master or agile coach to be pushing back on the directors. BTW, To me the stand up doesn't have to be at start of day so it doesn't police timeliness, I've worked in a few teams where it has middle of the day or last thing - whatever suits the team it's their meeting (and as such is as valuable, long / short or existent as the team needs).
As for loading - I would expect any decent manager to understand how loading / overloading and creative thinking work - that is part of what they are paid for. Although (again) they will need some tutoring if they don't understand it.
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No worries.
The background of the directors matters. They all come from big Indian companies , and the way they get the job done is totally different there. They try to apply all the out dated management techniques in the name of Agile/Scrum.
There are different teams operating, I in couple of LT meeting, leads have raised the productivity levels of few people, who apparently slacked way too much and nothing could be done out of them. Eventually all of them were shown the door. These incidents trigger panic in the minds of directors, who also happens to be Founders/investors. So tend to go in this 'take no chance' mode and try to grip everyone through the same law. But I'm the shield for my team. I set them free as much as possible and make everything by need basis. Only this "thorough" daily meeting , for the moment I'm doing as it was insisted routinely. But I'm putting my case clear on these things. And basically these big guys are not so bad, they listen to me and many times they go with what I'm suggesting. I think it's a matter of proving the productivity levels , with my customized dev-ops model. I'll be there !
Starting to think people post kid pics in their profiles because that was the last time they were cute - Jeremy.
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Don't you hate having to drop everything for a "pointless" meeting when you are in full creative flow?
Sadly, that is part of the game.
I may not last forever but the mess I leave behind certainly will.
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Seriously that's so disgusting. And I've freed my team from so many of these nonsense.
There were even some kind of implicit rules to force people to log into work on time, quite early in the morning, No matter if his/hers presence in the office is required so early in the office or not. They were trying to establish a kind of "Best practices". I've stopped them from doing what is not exactly , required.
Starting to think people post kid pics in their profiles because that was the last time they were cute - Jeremy.
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Shouldn't stand up meetings be really really quick ones with just these questions asked to everyone?
- Hey, are you still on track to complete the task?
- Do you think you need help with anything either today or tomorrow?
- If possible, would you be able to help someone? And for how long in a day?
"You'd have to be a floating database guru clad in a white toga and ghandi level of sereneness to fix this goddamn clusterfuck.", BruceN[ ^]
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Yeah that's how it has to be, But the directors want to see through the list of things that's made progress. They set the standard and I'm following it to some extent for my team, by compulsion. They even stick the sticky-notes on wall and do all those colorful kanban thing. But I don't do this for my team. TFS got the same online, I just go with it.
Starting to think people post kid pics in their profiles because that was the last time they were cute - Jeremy.
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Ask them to sit with developers and make the damn notes. Real time!
If you can't trust your team, you should not be working on whatever it is in first place. Yes, status checks and monitoring are important but these minute details, no.
"You'd have to be a floating database guru clad in a white toga and ghandi level of sereneness to fix this goddamn clusterfuck.", BruceN[ ^]
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The tasks should be broken down in something like Jira. Given appropriate states, it becomes trivial to see what the status of tasks are without the need for meetings. The key is to keep tasks small.
This space for rent
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Yeah we are breaking down the tasks as much as possible. This particular thing comes into picture, when the nature of task is like Writing algorithm for a module.
For continuous days, the guy in context, will not touch anything, but on third day, he completes it matching with the estimate that he initially given :3 days. And it's something worth 3 days in fact. The first two days, he got nothing to share in the Sync meetings. He just says, I'm studying the problem, That's WIP, with a sheepish looks. But he goes back to his desk & spend hell lot of time in Facebook. I think somewhere in Facebook he's taking inspiration from to get into his work by mid-night of 2nd day, before coming to office.
Why I'm not much affected by this usually is, The type-1 people who rigorously work, for sure take 3 days, to finish the same problem. The only thing I suffer a bit is the anxiety he creates by the 3rd day, I always doubted if he'll be able to finish it on time. 95% he's finishing it by 'EOD'. As he calls it! 'EOD' means precisely 12:00 am in his language. Not the evening 7:00, that all people log out of work.
Starting to think people post kid pics in their profiles because that was the last time they were cute - Jeremy.
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I believe that while it is difficult to tap into the subconscious, the subconscious is aware of problems we are contemplating, works on them, and can "surface" a solution to our conscious state as inspiration. So, yeah, "ignoring" the problem for a time actually means it's being worked on, but not consciously.
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A bit of caution about Pete's approach:
If you take that approach, you might get dangerously close to an environment where you can trust the development staff to manage themselves.
Then, the organization might realize that management is overrated. Who will we get to synergize efforts across problem spaces buzzword buzzword buzzword?
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Your directors are wrong.
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I had a boss who wanted a daily standup where we reported status. We held it on an IRC channel instead of face-to-face (we had a profoundly deaf colleague). I got in the habit of pre-writing my status report and pasting it into the IRC window at the exact start of the meeting. My colleagues began to do the same. We achieved a 60-second standup. Once or twice a month, we actually had something to talk about, like needing help or hitting a roadblock. We managed to convert a useless meeting to a meeting whose uselessness took so little time that it evolved to a purposeful meeting.
I had another job where we had a daily standup where people reported status. I started emailing the group my status before the meeting. This caught on among the group in about one week. In this way we took a "standup" that took one hour and created a more reasonable 15 minute meeting.
Never do in a live meeting anything that can be done with electronic communication. The cost is too high.
And yeah, you can call yourself agile, and describe your interminable meetings as standups, but if you do, you are delusional. Most managers are delusional. Why is that?
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Only ask about problems / impediments "during" the week; report "progress" at the "end of the week".
Most problems are caused by not enough partitioning (i.e. tasks requiring more than 4 man-days); but expecting a "deliverable" EVERY DAY is ridiculous.
I always gave people a week to complete a task or two; and the next week to fix it in case there was an actual problem and get back on schedule. Never failed. And involving folks in the estimating process usually drives the whole process to a successful conclusion because it was "their" estimate (no matter how ambitious it might have been).
There comes a time when one deals with the peanut gallery and takes ownership of the project (if one has the confidence and cares enough).
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For the last ten years newcomers choose Java/C# over c++ is mainly because they both come with comprehensive libraries that can fulfill most of their requirements.
In C++ we have std and boost, but in some point they are confusing and their functionalities are somehow overlapped, which introduced a much harder learning experience compared to other languages.
The closest framework I know is Qt, but then Qt isn't open source.
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.jpg wrote: For the last ten years newcomers choose Java/C# over c++ is mainly because they both come with comprehensive libraries
Mainly because there are courses offered for the first, and not so many for the latter. There's also a difference in available positions for both.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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