I've been on three different teams in my career and each had different needs in terms of daily stand ups.
team 1)
At my first job I had a manager who spent his entire day putting out fires. I would sometimes go weeks without speaking to him. During that time, I would run out of work, be waiting on meetings he was supposed to arrange, work on the exact same piece of work as another programmer, fall asleep in my chair, etc. That team desperately needed a 5 minute meeting in the morning just so I could touch base with him and let him know what I needed and stay on task.
team 2)
My second job was at a large company. Stand ups were regularly derailed by one or two people droning on about trivial details. The room had white noise generators which made it impossible to hear soft-spoken introverts (almost all of us). Management used it as a platform to inform us how to properly fill in time sheets and that was probably the most useful information anyone ever gained out of those meetings.
team 3)
My current team is small with several remote employees. We communicate regularly through various channels on Slack. We recently decided to sync up once a week, and that seems to work well. Daily stand ups have been considered, but it really feels like a solution seeking a problem.
I'm personally not a fan of the daily stand up. Team 1 needed them, but only because the manager wouldn't take 5 minutes away from his insane excel macros to check up on the team. While the meetings did nothing for me on team 2, I do think they were helpful for management. Team 3 has no need for a lot of the same reasons outlined in this blog post.
team 1) At my first job I had a manager who spent his entire day putting out fires. I would sometimes go weeks without speaking to him. During that time, I would run out of work, be waiting on meetings he was supposed to arrange, work on the exact same piece of work as another programmer, fall asleep in my chair, etc. That team desperately needed a 5 minute meeting in the morning just so I could touch base with him and let him know what I needed and stay on task.
team 2) My second job was at a large company. Stand ups were regularly derailed by one or two people droning on about trivial details. The room had white noise generators which made it impossible to hear soft-spoken introverts (almost all of us). Management used it as a platform to inform us how to properly fill in time sheets and that was probably the most useful information anyone ever gained out of those meetings.
team 3) My current team is small with several remote employees. We communicate regularly through various channels on Slack. We recently decided to sync up once a week, and that seems to work well. Daily stand ups have been considered, but it really feels like a solution seeking a problem.
I'm personally not a fan of the daily stand up. Team 1 needed them, but only because the manager wouldn't take 5 minutes away from his insane excel macros to check up on the team. While the meetings did nothing for me on team 2, I do think they were helpful for management. Team 3 has no need for a lot of the same reasons outlined in this blog post.