[onemorepassword]

Now on the one hand, we do mail-ins as well whenever someone can't make it to the stand-up, especially since any team member can work from home whenever they like. Plus our starting time is loosely defined as "let's all try to be there around 10-ish", so some people are already in the flow since 8:30 by the time the last team member shows up.

However, every time someone proclaims to have found a better alternative for the stand-up, I always go looking for the "you-were-doing-it-wrong" red flag. One thing stand out:

"No need to take notes in a stand-up or bother someone with questions [...]"

Notes? Bothering someone with questions? These are hints that there was a dysfunctional stand-up in place to begin with, in which case it's hard to judge how well the alternative works.

In my experience, mailing in works fine as a workaround for situations where having a physical standup is impossible or disruptive, but certainly no equal alternative to spending a few minutes actually sharing information face to face with all the non-verbal high bandwidth communication that goes with it. One look, one gesture can say more than an entire email.

[philwelch]

"One look, one gesture"? This is engineering, not a fucking love story. Ordinary English should be sufficient to communicate status information.