Tells me that the team lacks leadership.

Tells me that the person in the suit (who is that supposed to be? a white man in a suit: are we supposed to think that is “the boss”?) doesn’t have a clue about what the team does, and therefore does not know how to engage with them.

Tells me that the team wants to get back to work.

Tells me that maybe the SM got stuck in traffic — so maybe a 9am standup is not a good idea? — after all, first thing in the morning, do you remember what you were doing the day before, even though you have not yet had a chance to check your emails or collect your thoughts?

Tells me that several people wasted time standing around — maybe there is a better way to collaborate when needed.

Tells me that the team follows “Scrum” — a horrible way to run software teams today — focusing on the team instead of the product, which generally requires multiple teams.

I think we are “supposed” to conclude that the team is not self-organizing, because when the SM did not show up, they did not know what to do. But that just shows how terrible the Scrum process is, because it does not ensure that a team can self-organizes: it merely presupposes that it will.

What teams actually need is effective leadership: not autocratic leadership, but collaborative Socratic leadership.

Standups are also a really poor practice: they are a status meeting. Most people on a team want to know what their product does, and how it works end-to-end: yet those things are not discussed in a standup. People don’t want to know what tasks everyone else is working on: it is a myth that they do, or that they need to. But they do want to know how their own task fits into the big picture, and how it will work with other features and components — but that is not discussed in a standup.