I knew you would get a-lot of negative responses. Yet, you point to a real problem: that the standup doesn’t seem to really work that well. I don’t know that your solution is one that I like, but I like that you are trying different things, instead of following the prescription of Scrum.

I personally hate, hate, hate standups. To me, it feels like an interrogation. And I don’t think well on my feet — that is, when literally standing on my feet. And first thing in the morning? When I just get in, I need an hour or two to get my bearings — before that, I have no CLUE what I am going to work on today.

And more important, I find that in most standups, people say what they will be doing, and I don’t understand what it is or has to do with anything. It is like a series of side conversations between the SM and each person.

The whole concept of a standup might come from Jeff Sutherland’s idiotic idea that a programming team is like a fighter squadron, or a rugby team. It is not. It is not a bunch of people all working together. It is a bunch of people with a common goal, but they have individual goals — their stories. They are not working together most of the time: they don’t need to, they don’t want to, they can’t, or they wouldn’t get anything done. They need calm and focus. And they often need just the right help at just the right time.

What works better is if the following things happen:

1. There is a tech lead who knows what everyone is working on, all the time, and makes the rounds, checking in on people, and pulling them aside to pair them here and there.
2. The team gets together for an hour or two once a week to talk through how things work, end-to-end. That way, everyone knows what all the pieces are, and how they fit together.
3. The retros focus on technical issues and improving test coverage, cycle time, etc.

Instead of analyzing the standup ten ways from Sunday, as if that had a major impact on the team’s performance (it doesn’t), we should focus on what actually holds people back: lack of information, confusion, and not knowing what they don’t know. The solutions to those problems are not best solved by the standup.