I’m having trouble coming up with meaningful updates and constantly question if im doing enough work or providing enough value compared to my coworkers - even if im delivering the work being asked. Sometimes my updates are very brief but my coworkers are quite long and detailed and I feel the team may judge me for the amount of work im doing. It feels like an added stress on top of the actual work and takes up energy in the day.
How do you deal with the stress of standup anxiety? Am I just overthinking?
On those days when I hadn't done much, my manager, the product manager, and the project manager, would all imply pretty strongly I hadn't done enough at the next standup, and ask why I hadn't done more, and so on. Pretty stressful.
What I started to do was, when I had a good day, hold some work back. I'd only "git push" some of the work I'd done. Only move some of the tickets along. At standup I'd just mention the first half of the work. That way when a day inevitably came along when I hadn't done much, I could claim to have "done" the second half of the work I'd previously done.
My relationship with the various managers greatly improved.
I don't know if this way of working was really beneficial to the company, but it was the company that was setting up my incentive structure this way, I was simply responding to it. I got the same amount of work done in total anyway so I figured it didn't really matter too much morally.
If there is micro-management, where people are looking at numbers and times of commits or ticket updates or whatever instead of outcomes and impact, it only makes sense to give them what they (think they) want.
In terms of standup updates, if the audience wants some 5 minute summary, it can be given, it doesn't need to be reflective of the reality of the past 24 hours, it could include some content saved up from previous days, etc.
The good news is that management generally doesn't understand the low level details, so you can project confidence while using technical jargon to make them think you are far more productive than is the reality. It's really just a performance.
In reality, sometimes you have to just BS things, as others have suggested, by holding some work back from your big flow-state pushes, or by dithering around with words like "I looked into...". It sounds like your standups are more about making management feel better than they are about engineers removing obstacles from each other. That's a hard problem to solve and probably outside the scope of what you can affect. Just do the best you can to survive and be successful in the situation you're in.
If I had any advice to give, it's to learn from how harmful and toxic this pattern is, and as you move up into seniority and management, make efforts to not repeat this mistake. Standup should be a time to discuss how the TEAM is making progress on delivering value to customers, not a time to compare individual efforts against each other. Managers should be involved enough in the lives of their teams to be able to make disciplinary or promotional calls for individual contributors without standup being where they receive that signal.
However, Scrum-in-practice is usually something quite different.
Things that help me in general are cardio, weightlifting, mindfulness exercises and meditation. Knowing I can walk away from a situation and be ok financially is huge.
Things that helped me specifically with daily stand-ups:
1. Preparing questions. Asking a probing question puts the pressure on the person that you feel is evaluating you. If you have a blocker, begin with asking the other engineer if they have completed that dependency. Always have a question in the chamber. Be careful not to throw others under the bus, especially if they are anxious or junior. The best questions are directed at the higher ups. After a year I learned that the executives were nervous about my questions and joked about my reputation as a "hard-hitter". That really helped me to feel more in control. Never put the company in a bad light with your phrasing.
2. Volunteer. Being third in line is panic inducing. Combat this by jumping the gun. I was often shocked to hear myself say "I'll go first" or "I'll start". My heart rate would jump a little but my brain didn't even have time to sort out my self-trickery before. The relief you feel after doing this is incredible. Also, there's something inherently calming about deciding to speak, rather than being expected to.
3. Conversational style. Providing an update can be terrifying. Having a casual conversation is [hopefully] not. Make it a back-and-forth. Not all of your questions need to be interrogations, simply passing the buck with a softball like "Can you clarify..." or "I'm thinking of doing this, what's your opinion?" make all the difference.
The problem may not be entirely you: 30 minutes each sounds like at least some some of your coworkers in those meetings are far too "comfortable" and taking too much time giving too many details that don't matter to what the standup is supposed to get across. (It's not supposed to be a list of all the work you've done, but to find places where you can cross-cut: work you did that may help someone else but neither of you realize it; problems you have that maybe someone else solved earlier.)
The other indication that there may be process breakdowns around you outside of what standup is supposed to mean is that standups were originally supposed to be only engineering (in theory). A "product standup" with directors, executives, and managers doesn't sound at all like what a standup is supposed to be, to me, it sounds like a daily micro-management checkin meeting.
You probably don't have any power to fix a broken process, but if it gives you some small comfort, it may not be entirely just you in this case. Your meetings may be asking more of you than they are supposed to be and of course that adds additional anxiety and stress.
You’re anxiety is likely because you don’t feel safe sharing the amount of progress you did or didn’t make. Unless your working on the most basic boring stuff, you’re not going to have the same rate of progress—at least not in a manner that is easily digestible in a standup.
I’ve seen this play out in so many teams over the last decade. A standup shouldn’t be a daily grilling on progress by higher-ups. If you’re team is full of adults and professionals, you don’t need hurrying along.
IMHO A standup over 15m means the team is too big, or you’re all sharing too much.
The most useful thing I’ve found standups do is surface blockers to the whole team, as there is often someone who can help that you might not expect.
If you need to go deep into anything, do it after the standup so others can leave.
2 stand ups per day is brutal! I would fight against that for the simple reason that it is an interruption to my and others work flow and do you really need to know what has happened twice within 8 hours? This just sounds like micromanagement.
Your stand up sounds whack - it's supposed to be just the team, for the team. Then you can use jargon that the team will understand. Directors and Execs would have a hard time following. Surely this is why we have transparent scrum/kanban boards for these people.
Your work's ways of working really riles me up, man!
Something like: I achieved [this] by doing [that] which leads to [value/progress].
On the other hand, I am a product manager and I do not need that much technical detail during standups from engineers - I am mainly interested in learning if the task is progressing according to original plan and if not, how do we need to adjust the sprint plan.
Standups should be done standing up so that people are annoyed if they run long so being brief is a plus in my eyes.
So yeah, I think it's just common to have some anxiety when you're up in front of your peers doing anything at work.
As for the length of your updates, let's just be clear that you're the one doing it right and everyone else is doing it wrong. There's cultural variance in how standups work, but generally the correct thing is that you get through the basic update quickly and then get into details as needed with the appropriate subset of people once updates are done. My standups right now are running long because of 1-2 people who just go on for too long or start trying to talking through solutions during their updates, so I'm having to walk the line between not wanting to nag every day but also making sure we're keeping the time under control.
What’s blocking you?
Anything else, including what you’re working on, should just go in slack or better yet if you have a B tier or better manager, should be visible on a board somewhere for them and your team to see.
I think meeting occasionally to discuss a project is great, but anything non-trivial in technology takes days or weeks or longer, not hours. 2 standups a day is highly counterproductive. Have you talked with your fellow engineers about this?
The biggest things people should be looking for are where you are struggling as evidenced by you working on the same things too many days in a row (too many days in a row is a variable) or you are asking for help, i.e. what your blockers or issues are.
It will automatically reassign any jiras assigned to you to a random teammate.
It's named after a ridiculous email management sent where they needed all hands on deck (i.e. weekends) to get a project done.
Length and detail of updates in standup isn't a good metric for you to judge your value. Direct feedback is better, and any company worth their salt will get that feedback to you in a timely manner.
If you are making an honest and sincere effort, you have no need to be anxious. But be proactive about asking for feedback and support when you need it.
chances are most of the rest of the standup are focused on themselves anyway
