Red Squirrel Reflections Dave Hoover explores the psychology of software development

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A Downside to Stand-Up Meetings
Thursday, October 7, 2004

I've been enjoying Jim Coplien's excellent Organizational Patterns. One of the patterns is Stand-Up Meeting, a foundational practice of agile approaches like XP and Scrum. I was surprised when I read the following quote on page 292:

"Note that one way to keep an organization stable is through a Stand-Up Meeting, where managers get frequent status from everyone. That pattern highlights the dangers of allowing ongoing daily meetings to perpetuate the crisis mentality. Such meetings are fine for redressing short-term crises, but prolonged recurrence of very frequent status meetings can create a crisis mentality. Every developer can relate to this problem..."

I haven't made it any further into the book. I pick it up and re-read that quote and it makes me wonder. I'm a huge fan of daily stand-up meetings, but when I read something like that in a book I highly respect, it gives me pause.

Can anyone relate to this quote from page 249?

"But there is a potential danger with such meetings. In some organizations, particularly where such tight communication is not the norm, daily meetings are instituted in response to a crisis. While the meetings give morale a temporary lift, they are subject to -- and contribute to -- burnout."

Maybe I simply haven't been in the business long enough, but I've never felt stand-up meetings contributing to burnout.

Replies: 3 comments

I've experienced what he's described, a number of times. I started my career working for two Fortune 500 companies, where the norm was the weekly staff sit-down office meeting. There were points in projects where reality intruded and this wasn't enough, so we shifted gears to daily or twice-daily meetings. For people accustomed to 'once a week and leave me alone the rest of the time' this was a shock to the system. It certainly projected a certain amount of worry from management that made everyone a little uncomfortable, and some grew tired of the extra pressure and attention. I think this relates to the principle he's trying to point out.

You may not relate to the principle because you have healthier norms.

Posted by Pat Morrison on 10/07/2004

Pat, did the management control your daily meetings? I'm wondering what the difference in context that causes the different result.

I've also been reflecting lately how differences in value systems lead to entirely different results when apparently identical practices are implemented.

Posted by Jason Yip on 10/08/2004

The meetings that affected morale were organized by management. Self-organzing meetings among the developers weren't a problem (from the developers' point of view)

Posted by Pat Morrison on 10/12/2004

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