Question: How to deal with Large and Long Standups

Is your standup consisting of 10+ people, spending nearly 1+ hours? If so, read on.

Suddenly you realize you’ve been standing for a long time. Or suddenly you realize you are sitting down in standups. Because everyone’s legs gave out.

Then your team became this giant standup, and you must claw your way out of it. It’s hard, especially if you are a team member, not a lead or in the leadership position.

Let me explain why it’s bad first.

I think this happens to every dev team one time or other, at least until it becomes a 100+ employee company.

Typically in a <20 person development team, you are probably going to have 1~2 leads, and perhaps a hands-on director type of a person.

Also, this usually is in a rapid development startup, where the C-level heads are usually keen on getting the dev team to create the MVP, and then subsequently get out features as fast as possible to meet deadlines and Go To Market dates. Maybe there’s a conference you have to deliver to, all in the name of getting new clients.

Typically business direction keeps changing in those circumstances, and pretty soon the pressure is on for the CTO / director. They gotta answer to the CEO and eventually it becomes a micro-managing environment.

If that person with the key role - let’s call that a “lead” for now - also has a healthy dose of Type A personality, or a slight hint of narcissism, or on the other hand has some trust issues (probably due to some history of the team, or with business), then you end up in a big stand up, where that lead needs to know every little thing that happens in the dev team.

Sometimes it can get even worse. A standup in the morning, and then one at 4pm. ..And then one in the morning the next day.

Now, add parking-lot discussions happening in standups. This is where it begins to be costly. 10+ people who cost $60-70/hr that talks around an hour everyday is spending near $1000 everyday just in meetings. That’s $30k a month. Just doing standups.

How to Solve it as a Team Member - be bold but be humble

In order to change the course of a team, as a team member, is tough. You have to have leadership buy-in, and this is different argument for each leader position. Roughly here’re what you can use:

• For the team-lead:
  • Development hours are getting lost
  • 10+ people can’t possibly be talking about issues that all 10+ people are directly involved with, so ask if they can be excused if they deem parking-lot discussions are not for them.
• For the C-level/business:
  • It’s likely you’re the tech lead. If you are close to the CTO, you might want to raise the monetary calculation of money spent on standups every month.

But making one’s behavior and decisions to change is an art, which has its own industry of self-help books and courses, so I will point a few at the end of this post.

For now let’s go on to how can we change the standup to be more manageable.

Re-structuring to a manageable StandUp, to next best format

1. Split the project into 3 small areas, and those should be 3~4 person teams.
2. Have smaller stand ups, max 10 min each. Overlap with only that main lead.
3. For anything else, keep the discussion in documentations. It is hard and they get outdated, but in any company documentations is one of the sweat equity you really need to start making, so gotta start typing things up.
4. DO NOT HAVE PARKING LOT DISCUSSIONS!
   1. As a corollary: any discussions should ALWAYS have action items in DOCUMENATION.
      • This is really important, because when leads are involved, they are keen to just make a spot decision and go to the next shiny problem to solve, increasing risk of that decision either being ephemeral or changed in everyone’s siloed minds.
      • Therefore bring it to a semi-solid state by writing it down.

..On towards the Very Best Stand Up format: asynchronous

The best way to have standups is actually doing it via some messaging platform - like Slack, Basecamp, Teams, or Discord.

Standups are just status updates. Why do they need to be done at one time, where everyone needs to be together?

(Insert Introvert Rant)

Sure, there is the social advantage of doing it that way, which for introverts like me, is actually quite fun - a way to talk to co-workers. Because I know I’d be just working on my station and agonizing if I would be intruding on my neighbors if I approach on them and interrupt whatever they are working on.

However, we can always create a social meet where everyone’s supposed to drop everything and just interact socially.

Anyways. Where was I. Oh right.

Daily statuses can be posted per day, in the morning in some sort of a #standups channel. Then, leads can quickly glance where everyone is at. They can analyze to their heart’s content. It’s a source of documentation as well. Any blockers will be more apparent as the lead reads over them, and impromptu discussions will also start, where everyone who finds those discussions relevant can freely do so there.

This way, you can increase efficiency and overall joy for each developer. Anyone who loves solving problems would love to have a lot of time solving problems.

It’s 2021. Time to embrace chat as another form of communication.

Resources: How to influence others

Here’re some reading materials I highly recommend.

(Disclaimer: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org, the independent bookstore network. I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.)

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion - Robert B. Cialdini

• This goes over the big picture of making an influence on others. Really good book.

Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as If Your Life Depended on It - Chris Voss, Tahl Raz

• This goes over negotiation tactics, written by a FBI hostage negotiation specialist - where situations call for never splitting or meeting halfway.

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard - Dan Heath, Chip Heath

• Another masterpiece from the Heath brothers, which goes over tactics to use when you feel daunting to do so - kinda like our situation.

How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Cargenie

• One of the timeless masterpiece out there. READ THIS - it will generally help you become a better person, and also naturally influence others.

Please share your thoughts below!

Above are strictly my biased opinions and tactics I used / felt during my involvement with development teams over past couple companies. Do you agree/disagree with what I wrote? I’d love to hear your experience in your development teams, and/or any interesting books/resources on bringing change!