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But that 45 minute meeting had to happen anyway, apparently. It wasn't scheduled or mandated, it was decided by those two people it needed to happen. Meaning regardless of process, it was necessary. The issue is a lot of people seem to see "standup requires everyone", and "communication should happen", and conflate the two to "every meeting requires every person", which just is not the case, and then as they see all their time is taken up by pointless meetings they didn't need to attend, they blame agile. I've seen the same mistake in waterfall development shops, and people blamed the process there too, even though it's really just cultural. Let me give you a specific example. Persons A-H have a standup. It's 15 minutes. Afterwards, A needs to talk to C about something, which will take 45 minutes. B needs to talk to D about something, which will take 45 minutes. F needs to talk to both A and H about something, for 45 minutes. A talks to C, while B talks to D. Then A talks with F and H. Total time taken (excluding the 15 minute standup) - A - 90 minutes
B,C,D,F,H - 45 minutes
E,G - 0 minutes. This is exactly what should have happened -regardless- of your process; these are meetings where only the required people are involved, no one's time is wasted. What often ends up happening when you hear about day long status meetings and other such terribleness, is after the 15 minute standup, they go straight into discussions, with the entire team. That is - A talks with C, with everyone still present. Then B talks with D, with everyone still present. Then A talks with F and H, with everyone still present. For a total time of 135 minutes (again, excluding the 15 minute standup). Meaning that -everyone lost 135 minutes-. Now, if you're claiming that A never actually needed to talk to C, and B never actually needed to talk to D, and A never actually needed to talk with F and H, then that's an organizational problem that is, again, unrelated to agile (or waterfall, or anything else). You simply have people who insist on wasting others time, and regardless of your methodology you're going to run into that issue. |