[p4wnc6]

In several jobs all using Agile, with experienced Scrum masters and lots of training, I've never heard of or witnessed a stand-up actually lasting the allotted 5 minutes (they always run way over and never contain info that I actually need to be present to hear about) -- not even when it was a team of just four people. It's simply unrealistically averse to human nature.

[disruptiveagile]

Hmmm, during my last contract my shortest daily stand-up with an oversized team (14) was in fact four minutes: we held it around a restaurant table right before dishes being served :) PS: It took 4 minutes because one of the team members was new - her first day with us ...

[matthewmacleod]

I have very infrequently had a standup run over in ~5 years of daily stand-ups; if it does (rare), it's because we've discovered an issue that's going to stop the team making progress immediately and needs to be dealt with. They almost always contain relevant info from the team I am working closely with.

I have to wonder the environments in which people are working where this is not the case. Is it just that the teams are too large?

[p4wnc6]

I don't doubt your experience. I'm just saying that my experience has been violently the opposite -- for both large and small teams in large and small companies, all of which had done extensive training about Agile and had used Agile for a long time. Also, and this is not an exaggeration, literally every software colleague or contact or friend I know also has had the experience I have had.

We acknowledge there are amazingly rare companies like where you work that don't suffer from this -- but they just seem to be so, so, so extremely rare that they don't really factor into any true understanding of what "Agile" means in practice at the overwhelming majority of companies.

Also, in almost every case our standup meetings went on too long because people talked about irrelevant things, personal anecdotes, weekend plans, etc. Many times they thought what they were saying was relevant, but it wasn't. Scrum leaders were often the ones doing this the most.

Over time it basically fractured the team into two groups:

(1) the "boy scout" group who wanted to appease the Agile process and look like good, obedient workers, and so never minded the irrelevant and time-wasting meetings and acted chipper and happy to engage in all things Agile.

(2) the disillusioned and burned out group, for whom (over time) the irrelevant banter of stand-ups became like having someone grind your eardrums with sandpaper, and led to frustration, lack of energy to participate, and resentment, and a ton of turnover.

I've seen this dynamic develop in a lot of companies too. Sadly, the answer they usually come up with is a sort of Agile eugenics: let the people who get understandably frustrated by Agile leave -- regardless of how much experience in the company they have, how critical they are to their team or product, or how good they are. And then change the hiring process to screen virtually solely for Agile enthusiasm and end up shifting the workforce to a pro-Agile monoculture -- and then, regardless of whether it's objectively true or not, declare victory and talk endlessly about how much more productive you are now that you are uniformly Agile.