On daily meetings

Posted by Jon
on Friday, April 06

We’ve used a daily stand-up meeting at Slantwise Design for almost a year, variously called our “stand-up,” or “scrum,” or “duck” (don’t ask). At about 10am every morning, the six of us at Slantwise get together for a short meeting to answer three questions:

  1. What did I do yesterday?
  2. What will I do today?
  3. Are any obstacles keeping me from getting work done?

In theory, the meeting should be quick – maybe 10-15 minutes. In theory, it should facilitate communication, put everyone on the same page, strengthen our team, and drive our projects forward.

In practice, it hasn’t worked for us. So a few weeks ago we dropped our morning stand-up, for five reasons, which I’ll outline below.