[nitely]

5 minutes or 5 hours, an interruption is an interruption. My ideal day to be fully productive would've no meetings at all. I don't need each day to be an ideal day, just once a week (or more if at all possible). However, when there is an scheduled interruption each day every day, guess what?

Also, anything that feels like micro-management will be considered micro-management. A daily meeting to give a status report looks a lot like that.

[em-bee]

at the beginning or end of the day? or before or after lunch break?

micro-management is if i tell you every single step that you should do, but a daily status-update is not

[nitely]

> at the beginning or end of the day? or before or after lunch break?

That could work if everyone gets at work at the same time (+/-30m) or if everyone takes lunch at the same time (+/-30m), which has not been the case in most of the companies I've worked for. It'd be better at the end of the day, assuming no one does extra hours, but then it's even less useful or at least it becomes obvious it's all about status-updates.

> micro-management is if i tell you every single step that you should do, but a daily status-update is not

It's a micro-management enabler. There's no way to know if it's used to pressure someone to deliver, or to do things a certain way, without working in that team.

The bottom line is that stand-ups are of very questionable use. There are just better, more effective ways to communicate what everyone is working on, what things are done, and when someone is blocked. i.e: ticket assignments, PRs, sporadic side meetings, asynchronous communication (Slack, emails, etc), etc.

[em-bee]

It'd be better at the end of the day, assuming no one does extra hours, but then it's even less useful or at least it becomes obvious it's all about status-updates.

i disagree that doing it in the evening makes it less useful. it shouldn't matter much if i report resterdays work and my plan for today, or i report todays work and my plan for tomorrow.

and sure, people doing scrum wrong can use this as a way to enable micromanagement. but as has been mentioned elsewhere, the alternative is managers running around and interrupting you at will. it's not reasonable to blame daily standups for that and reject it just because it gets abused by some.

the kitchen knife analogy comes to mind...

i have had nothing but positive experience with daily standups. they help me focus and not spend days trailing off on a tangent or failing to ask for help because i am the junior, to shy to ask questions, or worse, harbor the feeling that no-one cares about my work. in other words, for me the daily standups acted as a team-integrator.

as a team leader and manager, daily standups help me be uptodate on what's happening, and save me from having to invest time to check myself. if anything, daily standups help me avoid micromanaging, because they satisfy my anxiety about the work being done without needing to be intrusive.

5 minutes of your time, that you can prepare for, so you are not surprised by it, and you'll be left alone for the rest of the day.