It makes sense if you’re in an industry with hotspot flare-ups. I work MSP IT and those morning meeting are the way my team asks for help on pressing issues, or rings the alarm bells on business impacting outages. Additionally, Tier I helpdesk and Tier III projects never communicate, so the SUM is where T1 hears about where projects are at (in case they get the breakfix for that item) and T3 knows how swamped T1 is and what mobile techs are out, and T2 gets a chance to tell us if the flow from T1 and T3 into the “escalation sandwich” is too much. And we genuinely have it down pat to 5-10min.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had shitty SUM requirements, but when they’re done right, it’s better than a state of the union email/Teams message.
It makes sense if you’re in an industry with hotspot flare-ups
Only if handled properly, which a lot of supposed “stand-ups” aren’t.
I don’t see how you can have a meeting with members of 3 different tiers of support where progress on multiple projects is summarized in a way that someone not on the projects can get anything meaningful out of it, in addition to tier 1 gets to talk about how swamped they are, and tier 2 gets to talk about the flow from tier 1 into some delicious sandwich, and have that only take 5 minutes. I’m guessing that’s a minimum of 15 people in the meeting, if you have multiple tiers and everyone’s present. To get things done in 5 minutes means that on average everyone only gets to talk for 24 seconds. If you have people who aren’t talking, that suggests they don’t need to be in the meeting.
In addition, the whole concept of “standing up” for a meeting is stupid. Sure, it means meetings don’t last as long, but that’s because it’s uncomfortable. Plus there are social dynamics issues you introduce between tall people (often men) and short people (often women).
Still could just be a slack thread or a dashboard. Putting people in a room every day is simply wasteful, even if it “works okay”. When I managed a team I hated them, but we did have a meeting each Friday afternoon to go over what we did well that week, so I guess you have to be tactical about when you pull everyone off task to huddle.
It really depends on the group, the workload, and the structure. I’ve got two fairly ADHD employees that love rabbit holes and one that’s great at focusing, but regularly needs some guidance. A daily morning touchpoint meeting like a standup does wonders for getting us all on the same page, making a few quick decisions, and unblocking them all. It’s honestly the best 15-20 min we could spend for productivity and engagement and our most productive meeting of the day.
We also just do it at our desk or virtually on WFH days because it’s a waste of time to walk 5 min to a room and back when we can use that time solving problems.
If we had less ticket churn, or less interruptions from on call/support work, we could probably do it just MWF, but that’s just not in the cards.
In my experience, daily standup meetings are largely pointless. It is yet another meeting that should have been an email or slack thread.
It makes sense if you’re in an industry with hotspot flare-ups. I work MSP IT and those morning meeting are the way my team asks for help on pressing issues, or rings the alarm bells on business impacting outages. Additionally, Tier I helpdesk and Tier III projects never communicate, so the SUM is where T1 hears about where projects are at (in case they get the breakfix for that item) and T3 knows how swamped T1 is and what mobile techs are out, and T2 gets a chance to tell us if the flow from T1 and T3 into the “escalation sandwich” is too much. And we genuinely have it down pat to 5-10min.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had shitty SUM requirements, but when they’re done right, it’s better than a state of the union email/Teams message.
Only if handled properly, which a lot of supposed “stand-ups” aren’t.
I don’t see how you can have a meeting with members of 3 different tiers of support where progress on multiple projects is summarized in a way that someone not on the projects can get anything meaningful out of it, in addition to tier 1 gets to talk about how swamped they are, and tier 2 gets to talk about the flow from tier 1 into some delicious sandwich, and have that only take 5 minutes. I’m guessing that’s a minimum of 15 people in the meeting, if you have multiple tiers and everyone’s present. To get things done in 5 minutes means that on average everyone only gets to talk for 24 seconds. If you have people who aren’t talking, that suggests they don’t need to be in the meeting.
In addition, the whole concept of “standing up” for a meeting is stupid. Sure, it means meetings don’t last as long, but that’s because it’s uncomfortable. Plus there are social dynamics issues you introduce between tall people (often men) and short people (often women).
Still could just be a slack thread or a dashboard. Putting people in a room every day is simply wasteful, even if it “works okay”. When I managed a team I hated them, but we did have a meeting each Friday afternoon to go over what we did well that week, so I guess you have to be tactical about when you pull everyone off task to huddle.
It really depends on the group, the workload, and the structure. I’ve got two fairly ADHD employees that love rabbit holes and one that’s great at focusing, but regularly needs some guidance. A daily morning touchpoint meeting like a standup does wonders for getting us all on the same page, making a few quick decisions, and unblocking them all. It’s honestly the best 15-20 min we could spend for productivity and engagement and our most productive meeting of the day.
We also just do it at our desk or virtually on WFH days because it’s a waste of time to walk 5 min to a room and back when we can use that time solving problems.
If we had less ticket churn, or less interruptions from on call/support work, we could probably do it just MWF, but that’s just not in the cards.
So, it’s not actually a stand-up meeting.
We do in fact, stand up for it.
People working at home have to stand up? So, their cameras are pointed at their bellies?
Stand up desks are a thing!