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Ask HN: The more technical the standup update, the less productive the teammate?

4 points by gardnr ↗ HN
We all oscillate in productivity. I've noticed this in myself and in others. The less productive we are, the more technical updates we give in standup.

My standup updates will be very high level when I am feeling in the flow. When I feel slow or stuck I will give much more detailed updates. I think this may be related to feeling a need to justify lower productivity.

Have you noticed this in your teams?

4 comments

[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 17.6 ms ] thread
PaulHoule
If you have two minutes to talk and there isn't much to talk about you will get granular. On a slow day I love to talk about fights with the build system, having to rework the mocks for the unit tests, etc.
dpeck
100%

That is why it is important that updates be framed in terms of outcomes for the business/customer/etc and that they be falsifiable.

tuckerpo
I've had the inverse happen to me. Would just give vague "yeah, working on that, expected to be done in XYZ <units of time>" and got a 'talking to' about not going high resolution. I've found a happy medium where I can gloss over implementation details and keep it short.