There's an article at the Wall Street Journal about daily stand-up meetings. It's mostly a collection of sound bites, and not really that informative in terms of why things are done or subtleties, but I'd attribute that more to WSJ editorial constraints and time constraints than the personal intent of the writer.
There's also an associated video.
What's great about the article comments are that they provide examples of numerous misconceptions about stand-ups that I've either forgotten over the last 10+ years or I'd never have thought anyone would actually have.
To help with education, I thought I'd take the opportunity to capture the misconception and then explain why it is incorrect:
Stand-up meetings are a fad. My first encounter with daily stand-ups was in 1998 when I was doing an internship with a Canadian defense contractor, before Agile (2001), and even before I encountered Extreme Programming in 1999. The article mentions standing meetings used by military leaders during WW1 but the current Agile-style format probably started with the development of Scrum, so let's say mid-to-late 90s.
That's 10 to 15 years.
It's a stretch to describe that as fleeting behaviour or a fad. It's more accurate to describe it as a trend which is entering the mainstream.
Stand-up meetings impose too much control. This probably refers to things like mandatory attendance, punishments for being late, having to stand up, the particular meeting format, etc. Here I would say that some people do actually impose too much control on their stand-up meetings. Specifically, I consider the use of punishments to generally reflect a poor understanding of human motivation. However, the key to avoiding imposing too much control is not about what particular stand-up mechanism is used but more about how it is introduced, essentially whether it is introduced in an autonomy-supportive way:
I suppose there may be some mental image of clocking-in for the day but this is really the general idea of checking in with the team. Is the idea really that talking about what you've done, talking about what you plan to do for the day... Is all that too much like an assembly line? Is it because assembly line workers typically stand therefore standing up in a meeting is too much like an assembly line?
As an aside, there are health benefits to standing at work.
To help with education, I thought I'd take the opportunity to capture the misconception and then explain why it is incorrect:
Stand-up meetings are a fad. My first encounter with daily stand-ups was in 1998 when I was doing an internship with a Canadian defense contractor, before Agile (2001), and even before I encountered Extreme Programming in 1999. The article mentions standing meetings used by military leaders during WW1 but the current Agile-style format probably started with the development of Scrum, so let's say mid-to-late 90s.
That's 10 to 15 years.
It's a stretch to describe that as fleeting behaviour or a fad. It's more accurate to describe it as a trend which is entering the mainstream.
Stand-up meetings impose too much control. This probably refers to things like mandatory attendance, punishments for being late, having to stand up, the particular meeting format, etc. Here I would say that some people do actually impose too much control on their stand-up meetings. Specifically, I consider the use of punishments to generally reflect a poor understanding of human motivation. However, the key to avoiding imposing too much control is not about what particular stand-up mechanism is used but more about how it is introduced, essentially whether it is introduced in an autonomy-supportive way:
- taking everyone's perspective into account (for example, checking the team's opinion on daily stand-ups)
- offering (meaningful) choice between alternatives (for example, using an egg timer rather than standing up to keep the meeting short)
- providing relevant information that people may not have had access to (for example, background info about how other people do stand-ups)
- giving the rationale for suggested mechanisms (for example, we use a standard set of questions because it's easier to remember considering certain topics)
- acknowledging everyone's feelings (for example, initially some people are uncomfortable talking to the team)
- minimising the use of controlling language and attitudes (for example, modifications to the stand-up format are proposed and accepted by the whole team rather than just by the team leader)
I suppose there may be some mental image of clocking-in for the day but this is really the general idea of checking in with the team. Is the idea really that talking about what you've done, talking about what you plan to do for the day... Is all that too much like an assembly line? Is it because assembly line workers typically stand therefore standing up in a meeting is too much like an assembly line?
As an aside, there are health benefits to standing at work.
Stand-up meetings are too short for thoughtful decision-making. Agile-style 10-15 minute stand-ups are not used for decision-making. The research by Bluedorn, Turban, Love suggests that standing decision-making meetings should be shorter (sit-down meetings were 34% longer) with no loss in decision-making quality. Note that it's 34% longer with sit-downs. There's no suggestion that decision-making standups will be only 10-15 minutes nor would be just standing in a circle. I'd expect decision-making to be more active than that.
Stand-up meetings are disruptive to individual productivity. Any scheduled event has the potential to disrupt an individual's flow, for example, a preset time for lunch. The issue here is that we should be more concerned about team / organisational productivity than any one individual. That is, coordinating the efforts is more important than having every individual "productive" in an uncoordinated fashion. Having said that, we can choose times that are less likely to be disruptive to most people. For example, if everyone arrives to work at around the same time, we can schedule the stand-up to be shortly after that giving time for people to settle, read e-mail, etc.
Stand-up meetings (and Agile) lead to low quality software development. This is more about Agile than stand-ups. I'd expect stand-ups to have minimal, if any impact on software quality. As for whether Agile leads to low quality, the short answer is "No, it doesn't". But this is based mainly on my own direct experiences which may not be convincing.
So here's something by Capers Jones and Oliver Bonsignour (The Economics of Software Quality
):
So here's something by Capers Jones and Oliver Bonsignour (The Economics of Software Quality
):The waterfall method has been troublesome for many years and correlates with high rates of creeping requirements and low levels of defect removal efficiency. Better methods include several flavors of Agile, the Rational Unified Process (RUP), and the Team Software Process (TSP).Stand-up meetings are all about standing up. It's understandable that one might think that because it's called a stand-up meeting, that it's all about standing up, but it's not. Standing up is simply a useful tactic but not the only one available to achieve the desired outcomes.
Stand-up meetings are common sense. This is an example of the common sense fallacy. If stand-up meetings are common sense, then why are they not common? Besides, we should be more concerned about what works, not what is common.
Stand-up meeting tactics are unnecessary if everyone would just have basic courtesy and common sense. This is an example of fundamental attribution error. The only reason why people don't know what's going on is due to their defective personalities... despite not having any structural, practical mechanisms for people to learn about what's going on.
The Creating and Sustaining Positive Organizations blog has a nice post of the lazy use of personality as a scapegoat.
The Creating and Sustaining Positive Organizations blog has a nice post of the lazy use of personality as a scapegoat.
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