Re: [extremeprogramming] Origin of term "standup"?

Thanks, Steve,

A thing that I think I'm observing more and more frequently, among the coaches I hear from, is a focus on a few practices that are sufficient in some particular near-perfect situation, perhaps the one they've helped to create wherever they are.

There are many different relationships with "the business", the "product owner", the "customer". There are many different levels of sharing of code, and of concerns. There are teams who are just beginning, teams who really have it in hand, and teams who used to have it in hand and are now a bit stale.

There are many forces that act upon us and among us as we work together to get things done.

Practices, such as pairing, mobbing, TDDing, micro-mini-macro-testing, stand ups, sprints, kanban boards ... it goes on and on ... practices are devised, not just to solve some particular problem, but to make a space for good things to happen. In addition, they are devised to be used by teams who do not have the luxury of having one of these excellent coaches with them.

The excellent coach, like some Aikido master, might just hold his hand just so and things get better. Us normal people, in the same situation, are more likely to trip over each other and fall down. Practices, like the stand up, create a space, with a certain ambiance, within which good things have a chance to happen. Teams are encouraged to adjust how they do that practice, before just dropping it, and the point of those adjustments is to move around in the space to give the good things a better chance.

So I believe that Woody's mobbing group may not need stand ups. I also believe that Woody does 15 kinds of magic that he's not even aware of, as do the other people in the mob, and it's one of those tens of things, or five of them in association, that's making the stand up unnecessary.

The upshot of this is that just as no decent coach would likely ever say "THIS PRACTICE IS MANDATORY", it's probably not desirable to come out too strongly against practices just because we no longer use them ourselves.

R

> On Nov 23, 2019, at 3:05 PM, Steve Gordon <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> The whole idea of a recommended practices like the "stand-up" is to give teams a healthy start on their Agile journey.  Once a team has achieved self-determination, then the team should be trusted to modify, jettison, and/or add practices as they discover what works and does not work for them in their context.  An XP team or Scrum team that is still going strictly by the book after 2 years is rarely a healthy Agile team.


Ron Jeffries
ronjeffries.com <http://ronjeffries.com/>
Apparently, this IS my circus, and, quite probably, these ARE my monkeys.






-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group.

View/Reply Online (#160319): https://groups.io/g/extremeprogramming/message/160319
Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/56090734/2417047
Group Owner: [email protected]
Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/extremeprogramming/leave/4902963/619838065/xyzzy  [[email protected]]
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-