[jebblue]

I injured my back in a fall a long time ago, 2 discs are bad. I literally can't stand for more than a few minutes without taking ibuprofen the rest of the day. It's time for standups to end and go back to the old fashioned sit around the table meetings.

[gutnor]

Standing Up is a crutch to keep meeting short.

If you can keep the meeting short and effective with everybody sitting why you make people stand up ? It is not agile to apply practices out of principle, you apply them with a result in mind, and if the result can be achieved in a more efficient manner you just do it that way.

For example, my team has never suffered from anchoring. We stopped playing with the voting cards once it became clear the result we got with or without them were the same, just faster without the cards. We continued to stand up because that meant people going away from distractions but not requiring a trip to a meeting room.

[matthewmacleod]

This, I think, is what people so often miss when they are talking about agile.

It's not a magic set of hard-and-fast rules that should be applied to every situation regardless of how they fit. If you feel you can do without some parts of the canonical process, then drop them. If you feel you'd benefit from some different approaches, you can add them.

Standups are no different, and if your team doesn't need them, or has an alternative that works better for you, then go for it!

[eropple]

This is, however, used as a dodge by Agile proponents (okay, more specifically Scrum proponents, but the other "Agile" options have mostly receded) to avoid answering to the significant criticisms of the methodologies involved. "Oh, you changed it because we said it was flexible and could be changed? Now you're doing it wrong, the methodology(tm) is fine."

[MCRed]

I've never seen it work. The people whose only purpose in the organization is to create meetings and waste other people's time always seem to be able to stand and drone on about irrelevancies for 45 minutes without breaking a sweat.

I've taken the policy that I a reserve the right to sit down at any time. If I'm sitting, you're bullshitting.

[matthewmacleod]

That sucks, but I don't think your misfortune in this case has any relation to whether or not standups are useful. There's a good argument that moving out of context for five minutes helps to focus and keep the meeting short.

[jebblue]

The practice is discriminatory against anyone who is disabled or has suffered an injury and can't stand in one spot for even a few minutes. Moving to a conference room is moving out of context.

[matthewmacleod]

I'm sorry, that's nonsense – in the same way it would be to claim that any meeting where people usually sit down is discriminatory because some people have medical conditions that make that difficult.

Any company with even a shred of positive culture will work around an individual's medical needs. You can all sit down, or some of you can sit. I sit on my desk for most morning stand-ups.

[mordocai]

In that case it does not ruin the standup to allow you to remain sitting, or have everyone sitting. Actual standing up was one point they recommended out of multiple and is not necessary for the practice to be useful.