We split our team into two sub-teams of 10 and did standups that way, along with moderation when needed so people didn’t get off track explaining issues or hangups more than necessary.

That said, the idea of ditching the daily standup makes me feel panicky. But that’s good. That panicky feeling means I’m asking an important question. Good food for thought; thanks for putting the idea out there.

Which means that they are not afraid to talk but also know when its time to shut up

Most of the teams that I worked in we had this flow of working 90 minutes in silence, then 10 minutes of downtime (smoking/joking around/coffee).
It’s always better to wait till after downtime to talk to people then doing it JIT.
Pretty frustating to be interrupted when you are deep in the zone doing complex stuff :p
Means that you sometimes have to restart your whole though-process

One disagreement I have is in your first paragraph, the “waiting to communicate” section. If something is a complete project show stopper, yes they should be communicating it prior to the scrum, but more often than not, the impediment isn’t so important to interrupt everyone else on the team. Besides, there is other work that can (and should) be done in the few hours between scrums.

Having people run to the rest of the team at the first sign of a problem is not a good thing.

I have found (in general) that Scrum standup meeting end up becoming more of a show than value. Team members start thinking about what they can report (in order to not look like they didn’t accomplish anything) instead of what they should report.

Anytime something becomes ceremony instead of value, IMO, you either need to eliminate it, or change it to add value.

The way I have found to add value is to add accountability.

1. What did I accomplish that I committed to accomplish, that is relevant to a backlog item? If I didn’t complete what I said I would yesterday, why not?
2. What do I commit to accomplishing today?
3. What is slowing me down or hindering me in any way?

I find the “pigs vs chickens” comparison didn’t work here. Everyone in the room and who contributed in the standup worked to get the story card from one end of the board to the other.

@Steve

Yes, it was a poorly-run scrum project. At least at the end. In that, we gradually, over time, found scrum to be obsolete and its ceremony and overhead more of a waste. At first, we rigorously followed scrum, but over time, we outgrew scrum.

Which is really the best goal of scrum. A good scrum team will outgrow its usefulness, to more efficient means of communicating and working.

Something potentially missing without the meeting is serendipity. Let me explain.

If I have a problem and I seek out help immediately, that is good, with our without a daily meeting. But I would tend to seek out and discuss the issue only with people who I think are knowledgeable in that area. It may be that a team member I don’t think is part of my issue has just the insight I need to solve my problem. Without that person given the opportunity to hear my problem, it may take longer to solve than otherwise.

This same sort of “accidental” exposure to insight around plans, architecture and all the other things a team does happens more often with a daily meeting than without. The serendipitous discovery of talent, skill or knowledge is harder if people are not exposed to information outside of their expected expertise.

This benefit of a daily meeting may not be important to particular teams or projects. However, it should not be discounted. The only other way I can think of to cause such information discoveries is by having the whole team co-located in the same room. If the team is not all in the same room, I don’t know a better way to cause them besides a daily meeting.

That means the person running it has no control over the meeting and or misses the entire point of the meeting.

The ‘real topic’ should be ‘how to effectively manage scrum meetings’ ?