[lairdpop]

No, standups should not be for project tracking, it's a quick synch up and opportunity to raise issues. (e.g. My task is blocked until X is done). Then you resolve the blockage outside of the standup, in a longer, deeper discussion with fewer people.

Project tracking should be in a Kanban board (or digital equivalent, such as Jira or TFS). This should be used by the dev's so that they know what work is queued up, what work is in process and who's working on it, and what is completed, so that they can do their jobs. In an agile team most of the management is externalized onto a Kanban board - the team manages itself most of the time, using the Kanban board to have a shared understanding of what's going on. A secondary benefit is that outsiders can look at the Kanban board to assess progress, without consuming any dev time.

The "subtle pressure" on the dev to deliver is a great point. In fact, when status is completely transparent, developers put a great deal of pressure on themselves to deliver, because they want to honor their commitments, and there's a social pressure not to be "that guy" that blows the sprint.

[watwut]

While I don't mind daily meeting as such, if communication between ream members works at least half well, you should not need special occasion to raise the issues. You raise them wherever you see other team members are not focused on something.

As for second paragraph, I prefer management style that accepts that things sometimes take longer then estimated. I don't want to stay longer because made up deadline.