[adrianmsmith]

> Getting everyone together for 15 minutes each day to ask, "How can we coordinate our work to make sure we are all doing our best to deliver the next piece the customer wants?" is valuable.

But is it more valuable than the work that would have been produced by the e.g. 10 people, working for that hour in the flow every single day, if they hadn't been interrupted by that meeting? (Before/after the 15 minute meeting people are going to go for coffee, read emails, read the news etc., so you're probably losing about an hour of "flow" work by having the meeting.)

[markshead]

That is an excellent point. If everyone knows exactly what the next most important thing is for the customer, and they are already working collaboratively to deliver it, maybe the meeting only takes 5 minutes. Or maybe the coordination happens informally just in the way they are working.

If you are trying to "do Scrum" it doesn't matter. You have a formal standup meeting because Scrum says to. That is how you end up with teams going around answering three questions that have absolutely no impact on anyone's work for the day. If you are trying to deliver the software, then you should be free to mix things up to better deliver.

Now in practice, most teams do benefit by spending a few minutes making sure everyone is on the same page for how they are going to work together efficiently for the day even if it is very short. I've seen some teams where most of their standups take 90 to 300 seconds...but the team felt it was a valuable way to collaborate. If the people in the daily standup don't feel it is a valuable use of their time, then it probably needs to change.