| This is almost certainly due to poor facilitation. That is to say, whoever is facilitating this meeting is either afraid to push back or else thinks that this is how it should be. Convince the 6 developers that they don't need more than 30s each during the "tech only" standup. Get the facilitator to aggressively chop long discussions (clarifying questions can be fine; discussions and debates are not). At least, move long discussions to the end of the standup so that people who aren't relevant and who don't care can leave. Initially, my team's standups (I think 4 devs at the time) would be 15-20 minutes; we're now (6 devs) down to 10-15 minutes, probably 10s more than 15s. I can't imagine there being much value from a daily, 30-minute, whole-team meeting with multiple stakeholders. Developers should perhaps talk to specific stakeholders... but those conversations should be focused on specific stories and probably should be done in much smaller groups. Heck, it would be fine to have 30 minutes of scheduled "office hours" time where specific developers can talk to specific stakeholders about specific stories. Bring this up in retrospective. Point out that (nominally) 12.5% of every day (and likely more than that) is being spent on these meetings. Ask about what value people see in these long meetings and if there's a better way to achieve that value. Brainstorm other approaches and get the team to commit to experimentation. Try, you know, actually standing up. On your feet. That's where the name comes from and it's to encourage people to be brief. |
Because then it's easy for that person to forget that stand-ups have no independent value -- their only value is in making the other work go faster. And should be calibrated to maximize that.
Which is why you get the "We standup because we have to standup" shops.