Standups are Poisonous

In my experience…

Morning standups force people to be in work before 10:00. Great when you’re supposed to have the benefit of flexi-time.
They always overrun. Rarely are standups shorter than 10 minutes. 6 person team * 30 minutes = 3 hours lost.
Action points are rarely produced, so the value of the outcome is questionable.
Others switch off if they’re not interested in the current monologue.
Notes are rarely taken, so by the time the weekly update gets compiled the team have to scratch their heads about what they did over the last week.

Solution

Team leader sends an email to the team with the subject: YYYY-MM-DD standup.
Team reply individually at whenever they start their working day.
Team leader closes off with action points and assignees.
Thread is printed to PDF and stored somewhere accessible.
Further conversation takes place in separate email / ticket / conversation. Interested parties can have their say. Others can skim-read or ignore.
Result of discussion emailed in tomorrows standup email.
Weekly update is compiled from the week’s PDFs.

Happier.