Daily standup ? Can it be optional ?

Adrian -

You are pointing at a poor implementation of daily standups with groups of individuals rather than true "teams" - Dark Scrum is one version of this.

If the team members are actually collaborating, the standup can be a valuable micro-planning session to ensure that everyone is working on the highest priority work, that interactions between them have been confirmed, and if there are legitimate risks or issues which need to be surfaced, those are surfaced.

I have personally witnessed many standups where their being held resulted in a reduction of waste.

Kiron

Adrian, this is exactly what I meant in my earlier reply when I said there's something wrong with the standup. Standups or Scrums are not status meetings. It's a chance for the team to discuss their work.

Admittedly, there are days when each person on my team is doing independent work, and the scrum seems like a waste of time (although our standups are succinct so we don't waste much time). More often than not, however, their work is somehow related, and they will either have questions for one another or have some impediment to their work that I can assist them with. Occasionally, we avert a minor disaster because team member A didn't realize team member B was about to do something, and team member B didn't realize her work impacted team member A.

Your other reply saying that everyone has to have a standup because management commanded it and the team must follow orders suggests that the organization has other issues. If the organization doesn't trust their project teams, then agile frameworks like scrum aren't going to work.

I don't have any magic formulas for fixing standups, but I would recommend removing anyone who isn't on the team. Your standup doesn't need a jury. Observers create a Hawthorne Effect; your team needs a place where they can speak openly. If your stakeholders want a daily status report, give it to them yourself.

Yes you are right. But Scrum and especially the daily standup have an enormous potential of putting pressure on team members.

It can be done right but it is very easy to be used in a bad, toxic way.

But even when it is done right you still feel the pressure of the daily standup even if no one is really trying to put pressure on you.

Software development is a creative work and many times you need some time to think it over and find the best solution. This is extremely hard to do when each day you are questioned about what you have done in a very short period of time and what you are planning to do in another such period of time.

If you are trying to do a better job and write good code you risk not reporting good progress in the standup and people may think that you are not performing well.

I totally agree. I think people need time to think and do work instead of reporting. Once again should really be driven on needs than methodology.

Of course it can be optional. Each organization is free to do whatever it likes without fearing of being busted by the Scrum police. :P

In reality it is the management who decides in most cases. If management has decided to use Scrum or other methodology that uses stand-ups then the employees must follow the orders. If management thinks that stand-ups are not necessary or even bad or the managers decide to let the teams make the decision in this regard then stand-ups can be omitted.

In my opinion stand-ups are too formal and don't bring much value, not even in the cases in which they are not used to put pressure on the teams and the team members don't feel under pressure.

I believe more informal discussions between the team members are more efficient in collaboration while for reporting and tracking the progress the mechanism should be implemented as needed instead of having each day a progress report meeting.

Trying to avoid to put pressure on the team members is also important unless such a pressure is really needed.

Thank you Gaurav for your response. Collaboration to ensure we uncover inter dependencies.