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The Great Stand-Up Debate: Are Daily Developer Meetings Beneficial?
Do brief daily meetings boost developer productivity or create unnecessary distractions?
4 Min Read
Alamy
If you're a software developer, stand-up meetings are like licorice or jazz music: You either love them or hate them. (OK, maybe some folks neither love nor hate jazz, but I digress.)
That begs the question: Why are stand-ups such a topic of fierce debate within the development community? And do stand-ups add real value to software development projects, or are they mostly distractions that get in the way of "real" work and undercut the developer experience?
Keep reading for a dive into those topics as we unpack the pros and cons of developer stand-ups.
What Is a Developer Stand-Up?
In software development, a stand-up is a brief meeting among developers to discuss what they are currently working on. They often take place daily, typically at the start of the working day, although stand-up scheduling can vary from one team to another. They're called stand-ups because — at least in theory — the meetings are so brief and informal that no one actually sits down.
The goal of stand-ups to provide a place where developers can check in with each other, discuss the status of a project they are working on together, and help each other work through roadblocks. Stand-ups are an important component of agile culture, which encourages stand-ups as a way to drive collaboration.
The Benefits of Stand-Up Meetings
In theory, having quick, low-pressure check-in meetings on a regular basis offers several advantages:
A reduction in the need for longer, more formal meetings. Instead of conducting a long meeting every week or two, teams can hold daily stand-ups.
The ability to identify and address issues within a software development project early on, before they grow more complex and harder to fix.
Maximum transparency into the status of a development project, as well as an easy means of understanding who is doing what.
An easy way to hold each team member accountable for completing assigned tasks without requiring developers to file reports or meet one-on-one with managers as a way of checking their progress.
Stand-Up Disadvantages: Why Developers Hate Stand-Ups
In practice, however, a fair number of developers appear to loathe stand-up meetings. It's difficult to quantify exactly how many programmers view stand-ups with disdain, but there's plenty of chatter on the internet about hatred toward daily stand-ups.
If you read through these discussions, you'll notice that most developers don't seem to object in principle to holding stand-up meetings. Instead, they complain about how their companies manage stand-ups.
According to these folks, the main disadvantages of stand-up meetings for developers include:
The meetings too often take much longer than planned, making them resemble formal meetings more than short stand-ups.
Some companies hold stand-ups that include too many people, making it difficult for each attendee to share information efficiently.
Developers sometimes feel that stand-ups are performative, with attendees more interested in showing off to managers what they're working on than in helping their colleagues.
In some cases, developers don't make enough progress on a daily basis to justify having a daily stand-up. Some feel that holding meetings every few days or once a week would make more sense.
On top of these grievances, some developers seem to take issue with stand-ups as a disruption to the flexible work policies that some companies promise. For developers who were promised remote jobs that let them set their own hours, being expected to sign in at a fixed time each morning for a stand-up can feel burdensome. This complaint seems to have become more pronounced in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the growth of remote work that followed.
Should You Hold Stand-Ups?
For companies committed to agile software development, the lesson is clear: There's nothing wrong in theory with stand-up meetings, but it's important to ensure they are actually stand-ups. Meetings that are longer or more complicated than they need to be defeat the purpose of holding quick, informal check-ins.
It may also be wise to evaluate whether stand-ups need to take place every day. Daily meetings may make sense for organizations with very fast-moving CI/CD pipelines, where constant communication between developers is important. But the reality is that some development projects move faster than others, and projects that are relatively slow may not benefit from daily meetings where developers report that they are still working on whatever they were working on the day before, or the day before that.
The bottom line: Stand-ups are not inherently problematic, but their execution can be flawed. Companies that want to put agile into practice need to take an intentional approach to stand-ups to ensure the meetings actually deliver value.
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