We’ve been in some teams in the past that people were seeing stand-ups as a burden.
We’ve heard various complaints:
“I wish I could do some real work in the time I spent in stand-ups”
“I don’t care what the team does, I have my isolated work to do”
“I can’t wake up in the mornings.”
First of all stand-ups are not unique to software development. Toyota is using a different kind of stand-up for years and it has been proved by the years that it works. These meetings are called Obeya meetings. Pete Abilla wrote a very good article on Obeya and how it improves the flow.
He says:
“..Again, basic combinatorics teaches us that as the number of agents involved in a process increases, the communication links between those agents increases exponentially, thus allowing for a potentialy Nx communication-link breakdown. To manage that, scheduled but quick Obeya meetings can help, as well as as-needed informal meetings between individuals and groups...”
So as your team grows, your communication links increase exponentially. With stand-ups, you cover a lot of these links in a short time.
Another myth on stand-ups is about whether a team needs stand-ups every day or not. Having a 20 minute stand-up will consume 4.12% of your daily time. It will add up to a 1/5 of a day in a week. So the question on the necessity of having stand-ups every day is valid.
It is not very easy to realize this immediately but actually stand-ups don’t steal your time. Because of the stand-ups, the number of the meetings decreases. So having them every day eventually is a big time-saver.“
