Why We Don't Do Daily Stand-Ups at Supercede An Article by Jezen Thomas jezenthomas.com Yesterday I worked on the widget. Today I will work on the widget. I have no blockers. Are you asleep yet? The developers are. You promise them an intellectually stimulating work environment and what they end up with is drudgery. What value can be had from these meetings anyway? Using “alignment” for justification is so nebulous that it is essentially meaningless. Engineers align themselves. They talk. Especially if you hire good ones (which, you know, you’ll struggle to if you have a culture of coercing them into this kind of busywork). Where does the real discussion happen? It’s written down. Why we stopped breaking down stories into tasks agile
Planning doesn't make for better software A Fragment by Robin Rendle www.robinrendle.com My own time in a Silicon Valley startup has proved this much to be true; planning doesn’t make for better software. In fact today our design systems team doesn’t have sprints, we don’t have tickets or a daily standup. Each day we come to work, figure out what’s the most important thing that we could be doing, and then we—gasp!—actually do it. Watching so many other teams slowly flail about whilst they plan for quarter 3.2 of subplan A, whilst our team produces more work in a week than they all do combined in a quarter has been shocking to me. After four years of working in a large startup, I know what I always assumed was true: you don’t need a plan to make a beautiful thing. You really don’t. In fact, there’s a point where overplanning can be a signal of inexperience and fear and bullshit. The scrum board and the sprints and the inane meetings each and every day are not how you build another Super Mario 64. Instead all you have to do is hire smart people, trust them to do their best work, and then get the hell out of their way. Why Software is Slow and Shitty planningsoftwareagile