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Discussion on: We are all standing up. Does it actually work?

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kethinov profile image
Eric Newport

The whole ritual ought to be totally abandoned.

Consider the hidden costs:

Developers need long stretches of uninterrupted time to get work done. Meetings, no matter how short, are an interruption. And interruptions are extremely costly to productivity.

The timing of any daily standup is almost never ideal for a healthy fraction of your team. A typical time is 10am. That's too late in the day for early birds, who were already awake and productive by sunrise and too early in the morning for night owls who are up until 4am deep in coding flow and prefer to sleep 'til noon. Thus, a daily standup is either interrupting someone's flow, or it's compromising someone's sleep (even worse).

This is why meetings should only be conducted as a last resort, not a daily ritual. People can communicate their status in the GitLab/GitHub/whatever issues that are assigned to them. If more detail is desired, ping that person for more information, or ask to meet with them if necessary. Don't be afraid to push back against the toxic rituals of Agile/Scrum in your workplace. It's time for a 21st century successor to Agile/Scrum.