Daily Stand-Up Meetings: Start Breaking the Rules

TL;DR

This study investigates the challenges of daily stand-up meetings in software teams, revealing issues and proposing improvements to enhance team collaboration, satisfaction, and trust.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights into daily stand-up practices and offers four practical recommendations for making them more effective and empowering for teams.

Findings

Many team members experience negative feelings during stand-ups.

Adjustments to the practice can improve team empowerment.

Key factors influence the effectiveness of daily stand-ups.

Abstract

Members of high performing software teams collaborate, exchange information and coordinate their work on a frequent, regular basis. Most teams have the daily stand-up meeting as a central venue for these activities. Although this kind of meeting is one of the most popular agile practices, it has received little attention from researchers. We observed 102 daily stand-ups and interviewed 60 members of 15 teams in five countries. We found that the practice is usually challenging to conduct in a way that benefits the whole team. Many team members have a negative experience from conducting the meeting, which reduces job satisfaction, co-worker trust and well-being. However, the practice can be adjusted and improved to empower teams. In this article, we describe key factors that affect the meeting and propose four recommendations for improving the practice.