DevTip #2 - Meta Arguing is Pointless

Imagine you are in a standup. Somebody raises the typo they found in production. They mention they are going to raise it as a bug in project x.

Another member of the team pushes back, "no! it should be raised in project y".

A third member speaks up, "it is not a bug, the typo was in the requirements, and therefore it should be raised as an improvement!".

A fourth member now chimes in with "why are we raising it as a Circle team issue? It should go to the triangle team, after all they are in charge of customer relations!"

This happens all the time. In the scenario, the team spent 10 minutes debating the issue, then it took just about 30 seconds to fix it.

It is so easy to lose track of what the actual issue is and start "meta arguing". It becomes worse when people start getting to a point where they argue just to shut the other person down

Instead, when you notice the argument is about nothing, steer the conversation back round to the issue at hand.

DevTip #2 - Meta Arguing is Pointless, don't do it.