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
What is this static modernism? Why can't office buildings use doorknobs that are truly knob-like in shape? What is this static modernism that architects of the second tier have imposed on us: steel half-U handles or lathed objects shaped like superdomes, instead of brass, porcelain, or glass knobs? The upstairs doorknobs in the house I grew up in were made of faceted glass. As you extended your fingers to open a door, a cloud of flesh-color would diffuse into the glass from the opposite direction. The knobs were loosely seated in their latch mechanism, and heavy, and the combination of solidity and laxness made for a multiply staged experience as you turned the knob: a smoothness that held intermediary tumbleral fallings-into-position. Few American products recently have been able to capture that same knuckly, orthopedic quality. Nicholson Baker, The Mezzanine The door handle is the handshake of a building modernismdoorstouchobjects