[mindcrime]

I'm sort of onboard with this and sort of not. I certainly believe that actual face-to-face communication has a place, and that it should occur with some regular frequency. I also believe in short, fast, lightweight meetings ala what a daily Scrum meeting should be.

But, between the fact that a lot of these meetings devolve into something that is not short, fast or lightweight, and my observation over the years that daily is probably overly frequent for these meetings, I tend to mostly agree with the author of TFA.

Every team has it's unique needs, but for a lot of teams I'd go for a compromise with one, maybe two meatspace meetings per week (maybe Monday and Thursday) and then a technical solution using email or blogs or an enterprise social network or whatever, for a daily "standup".

It's not just "scrum" type meetings that could be replaced with a "no physical presence required" techie solution either... some companies have a culture of accountability (which is a good thing) taken to an extreme degree where half the company spends most of their time tied up in "status update" and "checkpoint" meetings. I've talked to people who say they can never schedule a real meeting (that is, a one off for attacking a specific problem) in their companies, because all of the participants are too over-committed with these status meetings! For these, I absolutely advocate finding a way to communicate most of thi status information electronically, and cut the frequency (and length) of the meatspace meetings back dramatically.