Software development is
10% coding, 90% explaining why things aren't coding.
Pick Your Favorite Standup Excuse
“The third-party API returned garbage data… again 📉.”
“The database is MIA. Did it elope 🐢 with the devops team?”
“The frontend is ready, but the backend is still in beta… 🚧 since 2021.”
“The payment API costs $0.50 💸 per test call. My wallet hurts.”
“The AI service thinks ‘cat’ is a carburetor.”
“The API docs lied.”
It worked on my machine!
By Back-end Developer
The API is still being developed, they are slow!
By UI Developer
Waiting for UX wireframes!
By App Developer
The build pipeline failed last night!
By Fullstack Developer
We need more test data!
By QA Engineer
I was debugging an unrelated issue!
By Anyone
The time zone difference caused delays!
By Product Manager
I’m waiting for code review approval!
By Back-end Developer
The requirements keep changing!
By Fullstack Developer
The environment is acting up!
By Anyone
The test cases are incomplete!
By QA Engineer
The library update broke everything!
By Fullstack Developer
I had too many meetings yesterday!
By Leader
We hit a weird edge case!
By Anyone
The client requested last-minute changes!
By Product Manager
I was researching best practices!
By UI Developer
I’m stuck in dependency hell!
By Back-end Developer
It’s a known bug in the framework!
By Fullstack Developer
I forgot to pull the latest changes!
By Anyone
I need more clarity on the acceptance criteria!
By Developer
Blocked by legal/compliance!
By Product Manager
I misread the JIRA ticket!
By Developer
I spent time firefighting production issues!
By DevOps Engineer
The test environment is too slow!
By QA Engineer
I’m blocked by permissions!
By Anyone
I’m waiting for feedback on the feature demo!
By Product Manager
The CI/CD server ran out of disk space!
By Developer
My local environment isn’t configured yet!
By New Developer
The feature scope expanded mid-sprint!
By Product Manager
I’m waiting for security sign-off!
By DevOps Engineer
The legacy code is too fragile!
By Back-end Developer
The requirements were ambiguous!
By Anyone
The sprint goal changed mid-way!
By Product Manager
We’re stuck in dependency management!
By Developer
The new hire hasn’t ramped up yet!
By Leader
The tickets were reprioritized yesterday!
By Developer
I was helping another team!
By Anyone