Why Scrum is Stressing You Out

Moonlit8377 said:
They tried reducing the number of stand-ups where I work. Manager said less work was being done as a result... but our stand-up is 30min for a 20 person team so it's not too bad.

But yeah, I'd recommend this for high performing teams.
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Ours is supposed to be 30 mins for the 26 person team.
We lost 4 key staff in August, the last of them finish this month with their notice periods. Since they all handed in resignations the standups got a LOT longer, its now currently just on 58 minutes every day.
 
PaulMurkin said:
Ours is supposed to be 30 mins for the 26 person team.
We lost 4 key staff in August, the last of them finish this month with their notice periods. Since they all handed in resignations the standups got a LOT longer, its now currently just on 58 minutes every day.
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Standup isn't going to work with a team that big.

There are just too many people. I can guess that each person on the team doesn't care what 80% of the other people on the team are doing.

Time to consider smaller more autonomous teams.
 
Scooby_Doo said:
Standup isn't going to work with a team that big.

There are just too many people. I can guess that each person on the team doesn't care what 80% of the other people on the team are doing.

Time to consider smaller more autonomous teams.
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I agree fully, but it's unfortunately not my call, nor do I have any say.
 
Oh another thing I forgot to mention, the scrum master, the person who handled this, has left the company, so now it's left up to one of the senior devs to run with it. That's probably why, come to think of it!
Thanks I answered my own question.
 
Scooby_Doo said:
Even more disfunction, the team should be able to make the change.

But I suspect there is a PM type hovering around telling people what to do.
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All yes-men I'm afraid. At the moment I am trying to push the direction of one project out of paperwork fairy-land into something that can actually be developed, so it leaves me with precious little time to code as it is
 
PaulMurkin said:
All yes-men I'm afraid. At the moment I am trying to push the direction of one project out of paperwork fairy-land into something that can actually be developed, so it leaves me with precious little time to code as it is
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Yeah, tough space.

Once the team loses its autonomy individuals who make up the team tend to stop owning the product.

They start to just say yes or whatever and end up just doing what they are told removing themselves from being accountable for delivery of the project.

Scrum cannot work in that culture.
 
PaulMurkin said:
Ours is supposed to be 30 mins for the 26 person team.
We lost 4 key staff in August, the last of them finish this month with their notice periods. Since they all handed in resignations the standups got a LOT longer, its now currently just on 58 minutes every day.
Click to expand...

That should really be 3 teams. The Scrum Guide recommends that a team should be 10 or less.
There are probably bigger issues though that make it difficult to create the smaller teams.
 
PaulMurkin said:
Ours is supposed to be 30 mins for the 26 person team.
We lost 4 key staff in August, the last of them finish this month with their notice periods. Since they all handed in resignations the standups got a LOT longer, its now currently just on 58 minutes every day.
Click to expand...
1hr scrum everyday, yikes... and yeah losing key personnel sucks. We've also lot a few good people this year.

Scooby_Doo said:
There are just too many people. I can guess that each person on the team doesn't care what 80% of the other people on the team are doing.
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100% agreed.
 
Hamster said:
View attachment 1760018

This is when the stand up is for the manager and not the team, surely? No way do 20 people care about each other's stuff
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there's several managers so...

But it's really not bad, plus sometimes people (usually the leads) are really busy and you can only get their attention during the standup.
 
Left the corporate office environment for several reasons. The system is broken. It has turned into a micro managing hell and not all the wild horses on the planet could drag me back.
 
Moonlit8377 said:
there's several managers so...

But it's really not bad, plus sometimes people (usually the leads) are really busy and you can only get their attention during the standup.
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Well, biggest mistake people make is to treat teams and people the same. If a 20 people multi team standup works, it works.
 
Scrum advocates: scrum means that teams should be self organising. Run retros and figure out what you want to improve or change.

Team: So what happens if we have a retro and decide that we wanted to get rid of scrum and use something else?

Scrum advocates: Err, well you can't decide that, management says you need to use scrum. But you can tweak things within scrum.

Team: So can we decide to get rid of some of the rituals? Like bits we don't find useful.

Scrum: Then it wouldn't be scrum, so unfortunately you need to keep all of the rituals.

Team: So what can we change?

Scrum: You can change the wallpaper. That's nice, hey? Or the font we use in Jira, that's pretty cool.
 
Solarion said:
Left the corporate office environment for several reasons. The system is broken. It has turned into a micro managing hell and not all the wild horses on the planet could drag me back.
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If I could make the same money that I make now out of the corporate environment I would leave in a heartbeat.
 
Ancalagon said:
Scrum advocates: scrum means that teams should be self organising. Run retros and figure out what you want to improve or change.

Team: So what happens if we have a retro and decide that we wanted to get rid of scrum and use something else?

Scrum advocates: Err, well you can't decide that, management says you need to use scrum. But you can tweak things within scrum.

Team: So can we decide to get rid of some of the rituals? Like bits we don't find useful.

Scrum: Then it wouldn't be scrum, so unfortunately you need to keep all of the rituals.

Team: So what can we change?

Scrum: You can change the wallpaper. That's nice, hey? Or the font we use in Jira, that's pretty cool.
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Yes, but whatever the team decides they will need to deliver on certain expectations.

Scrum when done completely will accomplish that expectation management between the team and the stakeholders.

If the team chooses to do something else they better have the maturity to maintain or manage expectations or risk falling short and end up back being micromanaged
 
Moonlit8377 said:
there's several managers so...

But it's really not bad, plus sometimes people (usually the leads) are really busy and you can only get their attention during the standup.
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Why doesn't each manager have thier own standupa with thier team members and then the managers have thiers together? Multiple managers makes it convoluted.
 
Kosmik said:
Why doesn't each manager have thier own standupa with thier team members and then the managers have thiers together? Multiple managers makes it convoluted.
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funny thing is we have one big standup (main engineering team) and another tiny standup (ops team) with just my lead. But this standup sometimes also includes other teams (usually finance/finops/on-prem/networking)

Unfortunately, the nature of the work is usually cross-team with us usually needing something from them so it's basically become a team of teams standup. Sometimes one of the engineers in the bigger team will join our standup if needed.

It's not the best but it works for the most part. One good thing at least is that we're always looking for ways to shorten meetings/standups (like no standup Thursdays for example) so that the actual work can go continue. Also no micromanaging like others are mentioning at least...
 
Moonlit8377 said:
funny thing is we have one big standup (main engineering team) and another tiny standup (ops team) with just my lead. But this standup sometimes also includes other teams (usually finance/finops/on-prem/networking)

Unfortunately, the nature of the work is usually cross-team with us usually needing something from them so it's basically become a team of teams standup. Sometimes one of the engineers in the bigger team will join our standup if needed.

It's not the best but it works for the most part. One good thing at least is that we're always looking for ways to shorten meetings/standups (like no standup Thursdays for example) so that the actual work can go continue. Also no micromanaging like others are mentioning at least...
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The cross team sound more Ike a meeting vs a standup. It sounds odd that the work is so close that it can't be stretched out to a inter team meeting with less frequency. Or are your work items that small and rapid that basically a sprint is like a day?

Nothing wrong with leads attending other standups or having thier own but all team members sound like a lot of overkill.
 
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