I killed the standup. The team didn't fall apart. It should have, by the book
A story about a client whose daily standup had devolved over six months into a circular prayer. What we did instead, and why I now kill standups almost everywhere.
The meeting was on a Wednesday at ten AM. I'd been sent the invite by the client side as "daily team sync, thirty minutes, but we usually wrap in twenty-five, don't worry."
I joined. Nine other people joined. The scrum master opened with "OK, team, let's go around. Kolya, what did you do yesterday, what's the plan for today, any blockers?"
Kolya started talking. What he did yesterday. What he's doing today. Blocker — none. Moved to Lyosha. Lyosha talked. No blocker. Then Masha. Masha had one specific blocker, said it fast, one sentence, moved to Petya.
Petya talked for four minutes. Petya is senior, and he managed in four minutes to explain three unconnected slices of context, one of which was a complaint about an adjacent team, another a story about how he'd tried to fix a library yesterday and the library humiliated him.
At eleven-fifteen — seventy-five minutes after start — we finished. I hadn't glanced at the chat once during that time. Because as the outsider I knew: if I look away, I'll miss the important part. The important part might have been there. Theoretically.
It wasn't. Masha was the only one with an actual blocker, and she'd said it in twenty seconds.
The following week I sat down with the client and showed him the arithmetic.
Ten people × thirty minutes × twenty-five working days × twelve months = 1,500 hours per year. At this team's salaries, about six million rubles. For the team to re-tell each other every morning what's already in Linear.
— But, — the client said, — that's agile.
— It isn't agile, — I said. — It's a liturgy.
I rarely let myself use that kind of phrasing on a first meeting with a client. Usually I'm more polite. But in this particular case it worked, because this particular CEO was the rare type who likes to be told things directly. He seemed, in fact, relieved.
— Let's cancel it, — he said. — For a month. See what happens.
We cancelled. A month. Not "let's cut to fifteen minutes," not "let's make it weekly," not "let's go async." Killed the whole thing.
Here's what happened over that month.
Week one. The team waited for something to go wrong. Nothing did.
Week two. One of the seniors wrote in Slack: "Team, I realise my '10 AM talking timer' is gone, so just writing: today I'm on X, tomorrow Y, ping me if anything." He got three thumbs-up and two "ok, thanks." He did the same the next day. Others started too. Unprompted. The team had a real need for synchronisation — and found a form that doesn't require ten people being present at once.
Week three. Masha — the one who'd had the blocker on the old meeting — DMed someone: "hey, I'm stuck on X, could you help?" He replied in seven minutes. On the old format she'd have waited until 10 AM next day. Or not mentioned it at all, because "all's fine at standup" is a genre unto itself.
Week four. The client called and said: "Listen, I don't understand why it was worse before. Is this allowed? Someone at X told me no-standups was an anti-pattern."
— People at X said a lot of things, — I replied. — Not all of them work.
A month in we locked in the new format. Three parts.
One. A Slack bot that at 10 AM sends three questions — what are you on today, where do you need help, what's blocked. Everyone answers whenever. Some at 9:30, some at 12:15, some at 2 PM. Status — public, in a dedicated channel, searchable. Answer should take at most two minutes; more than that means essay, not sync.
Two. Once a week — twenty minutes of real sync. Not about status. About decisions the team needs to make together. Strategy, focus, who's on holiday next week. This meeting is genuinely needed. A bot can't replace it, because it makes decisions, and decisions need a real conversation.
Three. Daily — only when there's a reason. Launch. Crisis. Deadline in three days. Otherwise, daily isn't needed.
Over the next year and a half I killed the standup at about nine clients. At three we partially brought it back — turned out their processes genuinely needed daily verbal sync. At six — we didn't. No one died.
Most often the resistance doesn't come from the people attending. They're usually relieved. It comes from scrum masters and team leads, for whom the standup is evidence that they manage. Standup = managing. No standup = what do you do?
That's not about the standup. That's about the role. And it's not cured by bringing the standup back — it's cured, I'd say, by a specific conversation with that specific team lead about what their real job is.
A standup is a sync tool. Like a hammer. You can hammer a nail with it, or you can hit yourself on the head. Difference is in what you do with it.
If at 10 AM ten people (or, more often, sitting, because nobody actually stands anymore) recite Linear to each other — you don't have a standup. You have a ritual. Rituals work in churches. In a team they don't.
Try cancelling. A month. If the team falls apart — it wasn't the process holding them, it was the coercion to talk. That, too, is useful information.