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That's why it's supposed to be lead by one of the peer employees and not a manager and it's not supposed to be a round-robin of people regurgitating their Gant charts but only saying what's needed.

This is a great example of an anti-pattern. I actually don't use the "3 questions" when I do a daily team sync, whatever else you want to call it. I've found it might help a brand new team get used to talking to each other, but as training wheels it also encourages some bad patterns, and this one you've called out is not a good use of time in my experience. Right there with you!

It does vary heavily depending on environment. That's why the underlying question is, is it worthwhile for us to chat briefly as a team daily or at some other cadence? In my experience, the answer is often yes even when teams aren't doing that and don't want to, and the consequences of not doing it are being felt through failures to collaborate effectively, failure to stay focused on what's most important, and failure to help each other out. One might argue that you could do all those things WITHOUT a 15 minute meeting, and I agree with that as well. But for many teams, a short daily conversation about what's most important and how we can support each other IS the mechanism to achieve those ends. Now, if you don't share goals, don't collaborate, and therefore don't really support each other much, I would argue you aren't really a "team" in the sense that a standup expects, and then I'd recommend NOT having them, certainly not daily, unless some other driver required it.

@@buildingbettergames I think in a lot of teams the crosstalk happens naturally as necessary during the process so 15 minutes disconnected from context to have a chat seems unnecessary. Lots of people are constantly in contact through slack/emails/discord.

@@WhatAMagician Hey, if the challenges of staying aligned, collaborating well, and keeping people informed in ways that help the team deliver value happen outside of a formal "standup," then the team has solved the problem in a different way. Nothing wrong with that! I have found in my experience leading, coaching, and observing dev teams in games that teams will frequently claim that is happening when it is not. I don't think that's because they are lying. I think it's because they don't really know what that type of high functioning environment looks like and they don't think standups help. To their credit, in many of those instances the standups DON'T help, because they have become simple status meetings more about informing external parties than a recurring opportunity for us to make sure we're focused together on what matters most.

@@WhatAMagician if a 15 minute meeting at the start of the day is so disruptive that you can't get into a flow before lunch, but constant contact on Slack that can happen at any point is fine, there is something else going on for why people don't like standup

Does enough change every day on your team to warrant talking to each other about it? If so, a daily sync/standup/meeting where we talk about the most important stuff our team needs to know and stay up to date on might have value. I have preferences about what should be discussed, but it really depends on the context. I know that multiple times when teams have claimed they don't need that, and they can collaborate just fine without a meeting, I've let them test that theory. It doesn't usually work out. It's just really easy to get distracted and forget to stay on target as a group. But again, the fundamental question for ANY process: is the time/energy cost worth more than whatever else we could be doing? We all have our biases around that answer, but it remains the question requiring answering. Don't do standups just because you "should" according to some guide. But also don't skip them because they always suck. Neither is a good place to be.

I think you're ironically making the same argument that I am. Everything has its context. That's the point. That's why teams & individuals should be scheduling meetings when they are *actually needed and contextually appropriate* , not having mandatory meetings regardless of contextual necessity. The whole problem is when someone comes in and says "we're having this meeting because 'scrum', because 'process'". The dogma is completely unhelpful and unnecessary. The whole issue that engineers & people like Thor are complaining about *is* that there are so many people out there scheduling required meetings without a good contextual justification for doing so. It's just entirely unclear to me what you're counterargument is other than "yeah but sometimes you do need a meeting". That's obvious.

Much appreciated, it was awesome talking with Alex about this! Glad you enjoyed it!

This. Right here. Well said sir!

the only dysfunction that has surfaced is that the agile framework is snake oil

@ But that is a nonsense analysis. Thousands of companies use Scrum successfully every day. I've worked in a few. If a team struggles to implement Scrum it is almost never because of the framework itself. Its like someone proclaiming that C is a terrible programming language, but when you look at the code its a single 30k line function made up mostly of "if" statements. And then when you say "well you are writing terrible C code" they say "if I can't write good C its because the language sucks"

Spot on. My issue with agile in general is that it's been co-opted towards an old status quo that promises empowerment and gives only burnout and confusion. But that's not the only possible outcome.

I wonder what part of Thors past work lead you to the conclusion that he is "not a real programmer"? His work as Red Team Specialist by blizzard? His accomplishments at defcon? his work for the goverment? Or is it his succesfull dev-company he currently have? Most, if not in all of them, he was part for even led a team. So your comment really makes no sense

@@Kraark1992 He worked at QA not red team, His general knowledge of programming and security is basic at best, pentesting is not sofisticated hacking magic its basic stuff in security/IT work. And dont even start about his 'game'. Just look the steam review its basically abandoned unfinished project probably written by someone else than him. He just edit config files and yamls at stream and ppl think he is a programmer. I work 10 years as devops engineer, all the things he claims to be is bullshit

Get a life dude. Stop wasting time on internet drama and white knighting for twitch streamers. You're better than that.

@ he did both, actually, QA AND red team, pretty simple to google that fact. All you do is gatekeeping for some bullshit reasons, I just dont understand why. Are you so unsatisfied with your own life that you have to shit on others?

@ I like my life, but thanks for your concerns, but to waht I waaste time on is not your problem ;) . Its not about "white knighting", thats a bullshit reason you pull up if you dont have anything more relevant to say. I dont have to "fight" for Thor, he can do it for himself, i barely watch his content anyway. But it took me 3 minutes google search to find out that you just hate him for the hate :)

We have different philosophies here. Yes, collaboration can be done asynch. It can also be done synchronously, and that has definite advantages. Asynch comms are less rich and have a much longer question and answer loop. Whether one or the other "should" happen when building software probably depends on a lot of local context. The frame you put around "your work" and "shouldn't need input" is where I find the axioms to be different from mine. It's our work, and you don't necessarily NEED input, but you want it, because you recognize that extra eyeballs are helpful, not harmful, when done well. Acknowledging that it can also be done poorly and be a drain, things like paired programming and other technical practices aren't because anyone "needs" that, it's because it leads to everyone having a better outcome. I disagree with your narrow view of meetings. I've had many valuable meetings that had only two people in the room, and sometimes no decision was made, context was shared. But the advantage of being in-person made the time spent together (physically or virtually) much more effective than if we'd gone back and forth in slack trying to hash out the same thing.

@ I disagree about async comms being less rich when done correctly. By their nature they can include much more context than a simple conversation, and the longer question and answer loop is part of the point, it gives both sides time to properly understand that context and provide a valuable response. We definitely do have different axioms around “your” work vs. “our” work - more eyeballs and opinions certainly can lead to a better outcome, but that’s far from the default, and the more likely outcome is just bike shedding and meaningless changes. I’ve seen much better outcomes letting engineers take ownership of the biggest possible chunk of a project and letting them figure it out from there. I also think pair programming is massively over-used and only really helpful when either onboarding a new dev or the rare case where a single piece of code actually needs two skill sets that don’t exist in one persons brain. On your last point, I think we have different definitions of the word “meeting”. I would call collaborating with one person to share context more of a collaboration session than a meeting. With the fundamental difference being that the reason it happened is because 2 engineers decided for themselves that the interaction is valuable, rather than it being mandated by their management. Which is really the core of my feelings around this entire topic. My job as a manager isn’t, and never should be, to tell my people how to do their jobs, it’s to set goals and then support them however they need to hit those goals, and part of that is trusting that they know what they need better than I do.

@@MikeGaruccio As differently as some of our previous definitions are, you and I pretty aligned on your last paragraph. Leadership is there to set up the environment and people to succeed. It's not to direct everything. It's not the right environment for that, at all, and the environment where you need to tell everyone what to do all the time is actually pretty rare. So I'll take the agreement on the role of leadership as a win! :D

Understandable. The vast majority of daily standups I've seen in the wild in game dev have not provided value worth the cost. But I have also seen them return that value in spades. It's not easy though, so if you want easy I wouldn't recommend anything that requires thinking abstractly, and agile done well expects that of everyone.

"So let's see, we set up a system where if you don't finish all your story points you get crucified" Not Scrum. If you are being crucified for missing commitments you are going to be crucified no matter what framework you use. That is company culture, nothing to do with scrum and that won't magically go away because you stopped using Scrum. "Then there's the issue of constant meetings, a stand-up every day is INSANE" There is one mandatory meeting during the sprint, that is the Daily Scrum. If you think that talking to your team for 5 minutes at the start of the day is unnecessary you are either in the wrong team or don't need to be using Scrum "If you can't get by with 2 or 3 meetings a week, your team is full of idiots" If you only need to talk to your team mates 2 times a week I don't understand the point of your "team" and you 100% do not need to be using Scrum "If you need to communicate with a team member, just do it, you don't need a meeting for it" That is the point of the daily scrum. Instead of the possibility of being interrupted at any point throughout your day and being unable to block out deep work time you have a Daily Scrum, you quickly align, you quickly check if anyone is blocked, needs helps, and then you go away assured that you aren't going to be just randomly interrupted throughout the day. " and nobody will ever call them on it" So call them out on it. Again if your culture has micro-managing managers who don't trust that team that has nothing to do with Scrum, and it doesn't go away because you stopped using Scrum " Story points aren't supposed to be used for performance reviews, but they are" Story points aren't even Scrum, and again if your manager is trying to micro-manage performance they are doing to do this with or without Scrum "Sprint", by it's very name it implies an unsustainable effort, but we are expected to be sprinting at every instance. That is just silly. Have you even read the Scrum guide? It clearly calls out the need for sustained pace. All scrum does is surface dysfunctional culture. If you have a hidden dysfunctional culture before Scrum you will have a visibly dysfunctional culture after Scrum. That is a gift, why you think dropping Scrum would change any of this I've no idea

Also not a fan of JIRA. I do believe everyone on the team should be in standups, to include "managers" if they are a part of the team. But that will depend on the org structure. Sometimes they are pure stakeholders and don't need to be there. Agree also that bad patterns can cause more bad patterns. This is true of all frameworks or processes you apply. Unfortunately, the complete lack of process also has low odds of success once you get past maybe 2 or 3 people. Whether a daily sync is important or not is dependent on the environment. I have a military background. There are chaotic situations that require far more frequent than daily syncs. There are other environments where nothing meaningful might change for long periods of time. The question is, where is your team, especially within the context of game dev. I know many teams that could get by with 2 or 3 meetings a week, but could get by better with more. And this is the fundamental question: is the opportunity cost of a meeting worth what you get from it? If the answer is no, you should remove or improve the meeting. If the answer is yes, you might still look to improve the meeting, but removing it no longer makes sense. Some of the best teams I know met insanely frequently, because that was there path to high effectiveness, productivity, and focus. Some of those meetings were formal, some were informal, but they knew they had to be proactive about staying on the same page. Alignment is in a constant state of entropy. If you don't counter that you will be going in different directions way faster than you'd think.

@@buildingbettergames Thanks for your intelligent and well thought out reply. You seem like someone who would be good to be on a team with. I wish for us all to have great teams to work with, and then the organizing principles don't really matter, great teams make things work. Best Regards.

Absolutely agree. Hence why I find Thor's perspective completely understandable. If your only options are a terrible-waste-of-time-standup and NO standup, take no standup. But recognize that while it may be less common, actually valuable standups are possible and can be incredibly helpful.

I am also in the same boat, it's more of a status meeting for project manager, even more so now as quite a lot of us are remote. The team also grew so there are too many people, way past 10 (vaguely remember that's recommended max). The upside it kind is the start of the day for most people. Funny enough, my best scrum experience was the first project I worked more than than years back, thinking back, the manager understood scrum deeper and acted more consciously. Also whole team was on premise. For collaboration even coffee breaks seem more fruitful as you tend to start talking about work stuff pretty fast. Remote does not have that either. There are some people in our team that have Fika breaks, personally I don't like them.

You didn’t listen to him at all did you

Oh, yeah? And what is it you think I didn’t listen to? “If there’s no need for the standup don’t do it?” I’m sorry that’s not how it works. If I or anybody else skips, or remains silent out of sheer spite, you will eventually get reprimanded. Again, personal approach is not the issue, it’s the damn context. Scrum does not work. What is your job, on which of the side do you stand? Scrum or devs? I’ve worked on so many different project and no matter the damn scale, scrum is just not efficient/good enough.

Scrum takes more like half of the day.

@my bad, youre comment gives insight. I glearmed this from your message and reflection that its not scrum that works, but the people participating that make it so. And everything completely depends on context and the people there.

"I don’t need to know what the front end is working on, and neither does the front end needs to know what I’m working on" Ok ... sounds like you aren't on the same team with them, so why are you having daily scrum with them? If your manager is forcing you to have meetings with the front end for no reason what would dropping Scrum do there? " scrum takes off an hour of work out of the 8 working hours." Lol, what? You are definitely doing Scrum wrong

Glad you like them! We're close to getting that part of the monetization milestone, but for now we have a Patreon link in the description. Thanks!