[jpkeisala]

> Another variation would be to do the daily on Slack which can even be asynchronous.

That is exactly what I do. Every morning answer 3 things in Slack. It is also good way to say "Good morning, now I start to work on X, yesterday I did Z and I need some help on Y.

[seer]

The thing with dailies is not that you share your updates, its more that you’re forced to listen to everyone else’s.

Granted you can always snooze a bit and pretend, but that kind of bad faith is usually indicative of other deeper problems with the team.

Also this can become a drag if you’re “held accountable” rather than “helped in need” but smart leaders would recognize that and attempt to fix the problem in the team, and a daily like that can be a tool for them to diagnose problems like this.

[jeresuikkila]

> you’re forced to listen to everyone else’s.

This seems to be an overlooked aspect here in the comments too. Yes, nobody likes to be forced to do something but in this case it's worth it. We have enough distractions as it is so taking 15 minutes to focus on what's important to our colleagues can bring forth valuable connections of ideas and people.

[mytailorisrich]

Face to face communication, and thus listening to others, is the whole point of the daily scrum.

[carwyn]

Regular updates on the bug/task tracking systems together with notification and Q&A on a more stream based async system like Slack work well for us. Lack of activity is usually a sign of an issue, usually someone being stuck, a bit down or on a roll. All need a check-in, even the on-a-roll person as sometimes they get carried away without letting people know about changes. We tend to have weekly in-person synchronisations meetings.

This does really vary hugely from team to team and even project to project though. I fear "agile" methods have forgotten the meaning of the word they are based on at times. Regular re-factoring also applies to development and operational models I find.

[mytailorisrich]

The point of a stand up is to get everyone face to face to enable quick interactions and collaboration, and to do so in a very lightweight way.

Doing it as you suggest is simply doing daily update reports and negates the point of a daily scrum.

I feel often Agile principles are taken as buzzwords without really trying to understand the point. Now, whether the point works for you and your team is another question.