July 8th, 2024

Standups: Individual → Teammate

Kent Beck delves into the human side of standup meetings in software teams, emphasizing personal to team role transitions, human needs acknowledgment, and fostering teamwork. Remote teams may need extra support. Prioritizing human aspects boosts team productivity.

Read original articleLink Icon
Standups: Individual → Teammate

The article by Kent Beck discusses the deeper human aspect of standup meetings in software development teams. Rather than focusing solely on technical aspects like bug fixes or planning, Beck emphasizes the transition individuals make from personal roles to team roles each morning. He highlights the importance of acknowledging and meeting the human needs of team members to enhance collaboration and productivity. Beck suggests that standup meetings serve as a ritual to help individuals shift from "me" mode to "us" mode, fostering a sense of teamwork and shared goals. He mentions different contexts may require varying approaches to this transition, such as remote teams needing more support due to time zone differences. Beck concludes that treating standup meetings as a technical solution overlooks the fundamental reality that software development teams are composed of individuals with unique needs and aspirations. The article also includes comments from readers who resonate with the idea of prioritizing the human aspect in team dynamics for better overall team health and productivity.

Related

The 10x developer makes their whole team better

The 10x developer makes their whole team better

The article challenges the idea of the "10x developer" and promotes community learning and collaboration in teams. It emphasizes creating a culture of continuous learning and sharing knowledge for project success.

Software Engineering Practices (2022)

Software Engineering Practices (2022)

Gergely Orosz sparked a Twitter discussion on software engineering practices. Simon Willison elaborated on key practices in a blog post, emphasizing documentation, test data creation, database migrations, templates, code formatting, environment setup automation, and preview environments. Willison highlights the productivity and quality benefits of investing in these practices and recommends tools like Docker, Gitpod, and Codespaces for implementation.

No Matter What They Tell You, It's a People Problem (2008)

No Matter What They Tell You, It's a People Problem (2008)

The article emphasizes the crucial role of people in software development, citing teamwork, communication, and problem-solving skills as key factors for project success. It highlights the importance of job satisfaction and team cohesion, underlining the significance of positive personal relationships within development teams.

A dev's thoughts on developer productivity (2022)

A dev's thoughts on developer productivity (2022)

The article delves into developer productivity, emphasizing understanding code creation, "developer hertz" for iteration frequency, flow state impact, team dynamics, and scaling challenges. It advocates for nuanced productivity approaches valuing creativity.

Bad habits that stop engineering teams from high-performance

Bad habits that stop engineering teams from high-performance

Engineering teams face hindering bad habits affecting performance. Importance of observability in software development stressed, including Elastic's OpenTelemetry role. CI/CD practices, cloud-native tech updates, data management solutions, mobile testing advancements, API tools, DevSecOps, and team culture discussed.

Link Icon 2 comments
By @nederdirk - 7 months
This resonates with my experience. The small company I worked at during Covid lockdowns had a 3-questions structured standup. At one point we added the question 'how do you feel today?' as 0th question. It helped us to see each more other as humans, which is often difficult when Slack, Zoom and PRs are the dominant communication forms.

Also: all-day Slack huddles in the #watercooler channel, everyone muted by default, is a surprisingly effective way to lower the barrier for team communication. If you're waiting to talk about being blocked until morning standup, you'll probably ask for help about 16 hours later than necessary.