[gregkerzhner]

Daily standups can be useful when its a small group of people (3 or 4) working on the same project. In such meetings participants actually have the context to make meaningful suggestions based on other's updates "oh.. have you considered this? you should try this!"

Standups with more people working on separate projects are useless*.

My most recent standup with a group of 8 who were working on many separate projects spread across mobile, front-end and server. In this meeting, even if I did share some details about what I was doing, no-one else would have the context to help me. Also, it feels disrespectful to go into detail about something highly specific to my work while 6 other faces stare blankly as I waste their time. Ive heard stories from a friend's company of a standup with 30+ people across product, engineering and management. Could you imagine going into detail about your choice between an abstract class and interface on the call?

In such standups, the only sane action is to give a quick, high level update and mute yourself and go back to work. Standups like this should be ruthlessly dived down into several smaller meetings of people actually working together.

*Interestingly though, most people on my team love the standup for another reason - human interaction. Folks simply want to tune in and say hi to their team. In my opinion though, this isn't a good enough reason to keep unproductive standups, and the meeting would be better replaced with an optional 15 minute "coffee and chat" meeting. If folks want to tune in and chit chat, great - let them do it! But no need to waste people's time with mandatory "agile" ceremony.

[BlargMcLarg]

That's pretty much the gist of it. The ideals of "agile" (or really just Scrum for the majority of people) aren't what most developers rail against. It's how tightly the "how" is defined and acclaimed as the "one true way", despite authors repeatedly writing it isn't, and despite proof of software projects having done just fine otherwise. Which then saps the energy of many participants, making them less likely to do what they would do otherwise.

I've never heard opponents go "communication doesn't matter", yet the moment we talk about taking down these meetings, that's the first kneejerk most proponents I spoke to reach for. As if being against standups is indicative of thinking poorly of communication. Same goes for specification of goals, cooperating to keep everyone going strong, and improving to make things less of a drag. Is there so little faith in basic human intelligence and cooperation, that this one method is the only way we silly developers can be redeemed?

Now we have a bunch of people who haven't touched code in multiple years parroting what the consultants sold them and trying to talk their way out of aforementioned proof. Or they make claims like "well but it is better now!", as if their previous methodology wasn't so horrible they could've thrown a dart and very likely get a better result.