I’ve been in agile projects that worked really well and didn’t have soul-sucking, time-wasting meetings. It can be done well, it just isn’t most of the time.
Same, I’ve been on agile projects with quick efficient meetings most of the time. But I’m a project now with a 45 minute standup every morning for like 15 people. The lead just lets people ramble on and try to solve issues in standup. Backlog grooming and sprint plannings get equally sidetracked as well.
One common thread between these projects was that we used actual, physical note cards to track things. They were also logged in Jira, but the standups were 5-10 people actually standing in a room tracking burn down and status with cards taped to a wall. Nobody wants to be standing for more than 15 minutes, and anything that needed a sidebar was handled with a smaller group in another impromptu meeting.
I agree, in my experience in person stand-ups are much better than online.
People don’t want to sand around and want to get back to their desk.
Parking lot discussions can just be handled in the hall outside the meeting room 90% of the time and don’t require adding a new meeting to a calendar, although if there is only one issue that needs further discussion we just usually let everyone else drop call and handle it then.
I’ve been in agile projects that worked really well and didn’t have soul-sucking, time-wasting meetings. It can be done well, it just isn’t most of the time.
Same, I’ve been on agile projects with quick efficient meetings most of the time. But I’m a project now with a 45 minute standup every morning for like 15 people. The lead just lets people ramble on and try to solve issues in standup. Backlog grooming and sprint plannings get equally sidetracked as well.
One common thread between these projects was that we used actual, physical note cards to track things. They were also logged in Jira, but the standups were 5-10 people actually standing in a room tracking burn down and status with cards taped to a wall. Nobody wants to be standing for more than 15 minutes, and anything that needed a sidebar was handled with a smaller group in another impromptu meeting.
I agree, in my experience in person stand-ups are much better than online.