No More Angling for the Best Seat; More Meetings Are Stand-Up Jobs
Companies Ban Sitting to Speed Things Up; Ralph the Chicken Decides Next Speaker
By RACHEL EMMA SILVERMAN
Atomic Object, a Grand Rapids, Mich., software-development firm, holds company meetings first thing in the morning.
Employees follow strict rules: Attendance is mandatory, nonwork chitchat is kept to a minimum and, above all, everyone has to stand up.
Stand-up meetings are part of a fast-moving tech culture in which sitting has become synonymous with sloth. The object is to eliminate long-winded confabs where participants pontificate or tune out. Francesca Donner has details on Lunch Break.
Stand-up meetings are part of a fast-moving tech culture in which sitting has become synonymous with sloth. The object is to eliminate long-winded confabs where participants pontificate, play Angry Birds on their cellphones or tune out.
Atomic Object even frowns upon tables during meetings. "They make it too easy to lean or rest laptops," explains Michael Marsiglia, vice president. At the end of the meetings, which rarely last more than five minutes, employees typically do a quick stretch and then "go on with their day," he says.
Holding meetings standing up isn't new. Some military leaders did it during World War I, according to Allen Bluedorn, a business professor at the University of Missouri. A number of companies have adopted stand-up meetings over the years. Mr. Bluedorn did a study back in 1998 that found that standing meetings were about a third shorter than sitting meetings and the quality of decision-making was about the same.
The current wave of stand-up meeting is being fueled by the growing use of "Agile," an approach to software development, crystallized in a manifesto published by 17 software professionals in 2001. The method calls for compressing development projects into short pieces. It also involves daily stand-up meetings where participants are supposed to quickly update their peers with three things: What they have done since yesterday's meeting; what they are doing today; and any obstacles that stand in the way of getting work done.
Paul J. Hart
A large stand-up meeting at Grand Rapids, Mich., tech firm Atomic Object.
If employees are late to this meeting, often called a "daily scrum," they sometimes must sing a song like "I'm a Little Teapot," do a lap around the office building or pay a small fine, says Mike Cohn, president of Mountain Goat Software, Lafayette, Colo., an Agile consultant and trainer. If someone is rambling on for too long, an employee may hold up a rubber rat indicating it is time to move on. Companies make exceptions to their no-sitting rules if a worker is sick, injured or pregnant—but usually not for workers outside the office telecommuting on Skype.
One Microsoft Corp. development group holds daily meeting in which participants toss around a rubber chicken named Ralph to determine who gets to speak next, says group member Aaron Bjork.
As Agile has become more widely adopted, stand-ups have spread along with it. VersionOne, which makes Agile-development software, polled 6,042 tech employees around the world in a 2011 survey and found that 78% held daily stand-up-meetings.
Office outfitters are responding by designing work spaces with standing sessions in mind. Furniture maker Steelcase Inc.'s Turnstone division, for example, recently introduced the "Big Table," a large standing-height table designed for quick meetings.
Mitch Lacey, a Bellevue, Wash., tech consultant and a former Microsoft employee says that some of his former colleagues used to hold stand-ups in an unheated stairwell to keep meetings brief.
Holding meetings before lunch also speeds things up. Mark Tonkelowitz, an engineering manager for Facebook Inc.'s News Feed feature, holds 15-minute stand-ups at noon, sharp. The proximity to lunch serves "as motivation to keep updates short," he says.
Sometimes people cheat a bit. "We have some very good slouchers and leaners," says T.A. McCann, founder of Gist, a Seattle contact-organization tool acquired last year by Research In Motion, which holds a 10 a.m. stand-up three days a week.
Obie Fernandez, founder of Hashrocket, a Jacksonville, Fla., software design firm, says his team passes around a 10-pound medicine ball during stand-ups. For newcomers unaware of the practice, "it's pretty mean," he says, "but really the main thing you want is to avoid people pontificating."
Participants frown upon late arrivals, and some data-obsessed engineers have even computed the costs of tardiness. Ian Witucki, a program manager at software firm Adobe Systems Inc., calculated the cumulative cost over the course of a typical 18-month product release cycle of starting the stand-up just a little bit late every day.
The total—about six weeks of work for two employees—equaled the amount of time the firm could spend building one major feature on each product, he says.
Soon after, the team imposed a $1 fine for latecomers. Now staffers run down the hall to make it on time, says Mr. Witucki.
Jason Yip, a principal consultant at ThoughtWorks in Sydney, Australia, plays music such as Bob Marley's "Get Up, Stand Up," to round up colleagues. "It acts like a Pavlovian bell," he says.
Meanwhile, the Starr Conspiracy, a Fort Worth, Texas, advertising, marketing and branding agency, signals its daily stand-up—which it calls "the huddle"—with a few bars of the song, "Whoomp! (There It Is)," says partner Steve Smith.
"I'll be at a football game, hear the song and all of a sudden I have the urge to huddle up," says Mr. Smith.
Steelcase's Turnstone unit, which has been doing stand-up meetings for about a decade, for years played Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire," to begin meetings. It recently switched to Elvis's "A Little Less Conversation"—a reminder to keep meetings brief, says general manager Kevin Kuske.
There are occasions when even a stand-up takes too much time.
At Freshbooks.com, a Toronto-based company that makes online accounting software, teams try to do daily 10 a.m. stand-ups. But on days when everyone is too swamped to gather around the company Ping-Pong table, team members will shout out their status updates from their desks, which are arranged in a circle.
They call those meetings "sit-downs."
Write to Rachel Emma Silverman at rachel.silverman@wsj.com
Mike Edwards Wrote:
"Mr. Bluedorn did a study back in 1998 that found that standing meetings were about a third shorter than sitting meetings and the quality of decision-making was about the same."
About the same is right... Next comes group calisthenics followed by corporate dormitories.
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Veli Albert Kallio Replied:
What's wrong with that? Our company uses them in China and Pakistan.
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Guy Wilcox Replied:
If you have to ask the question, you wouldn't understand the answer.
But to give you some direction for thought - what kind of creative and innovative products have historically come of China and Pakistan?
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Steve Donohue Wrote:
Just curious, was the "stand-up" meeting policy reached at a "sit down" meeting?
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Doug Stinson Replied:
it was dreamed up at HP while stand-sleeping.
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Bruce Birkett Wrote:
We now the century-later version of the assembly line.
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Michael Swain Wrote:
The Privy Council (advisors to HM The Queen) has been a standing meeting each week since 1659. The Monarch at the time stands so that everybody else has to.
I am converting my desk to a standing desk - 'thinking on my feet' and being 25% more productive (apparently)
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MICHAEL T CARNEY Wrote:
Meetings in general are useless, these ones sound extraodinarally so!
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Jacob Maczuga Wrote:
Sounds like the latest fad.
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Casey Grimm Wrote:
This is pretty silly stuff. They should make the people who come up with these types of meetings stand on their head during the meetings.
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Wesley Dallas Wrote:
How about olive drab overalls for all employees and a requirement that each worker engage in public self criticism at least once a week?
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JEFFREY DUGAS Wrote:
Everything that is old, is new. The only people who need to stand are those who are giving a briefing, presentation, or status update. And turn off your dang devices during the meeting - not on vibrate - off.
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Susan Corwin Wrote:
I had a better way to have short, very effective meetings.
1. have a fixed agenda that must be accomplished for the day.
2) Hold the meeting in a big, cavernous auditorium where you only use 1/8 of the room and the rest is dark,
3) make sure the conference room is in Hawaii.
People go out on a break, see the sun, sand, ocean and become very anxious to "finish" the agenda!
Of course, they considered me exceptionally mean for having a "full agenda", but it was the most agreeable, productive standards committee meeting: got much more accomplished in those 5 days than the normal IEEE standards committee meeting venues.
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Mitzi Weinman Wrote:
Keeping meetings short is a challenge. Rachel, your article is great and stand-up meetings tend to shorten the length of meetings. When working with clients who want to keep their meetings focused and short, I suggest they have “Bullet Meetings.” You can stand up or sit but the idea is that participants need to come prepared and can only speak in “bullet points.” This is especially helpful when folks like to give stories and go on and on and on. Also, bullet meetings need to have a definite end time. Here are a couple of additional ideas for those who arrive late: the next meeting they are responsible for minutes or they bring the coffee for everyone.
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Toby Considine Replied:
Unfortunately, that inevitably leads to the horror that is the PowerPoint meeting, in which no one can speak without their single slide, and infinite hand-offs between PowerPoints take more time than the meeting. Of course, then folks edit the PowerPoints as they talk, which seems to addle their brains completely, and the whole audience gets to watch their [poor] typing skills….
After that, minutes are transmitted as PowerPoint files, with each slide containing three bullets.
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Mitzi Weinman Replied:
Hi Toby, The idea of the “Bullet Meetings” is really for quick updates. From Rachel’s article it sounded like stand-up meetings were also quicker meetings. For meetings that require more time, and many of them do, clarity of the meeting’s goal, a focused agenda and a leader/facilitator who can keep the flow of discussion moving and does not allow individuals to highjack the meeting are essentials to a good meeting.
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Megann Willson Wrote:
I LOVE the medicine ball idea...definitely going to add that to my toolkit (although it might be harder to implement while travelling).
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Lan Sluder Wrote:
The last thing we need is full discussion and thoughtful decision-making. Let's all talk in sound bites and make snap decisions after a 5-minute quickie.
Jeez!
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John Richardson Replied:
If your building a social networking site, that's about the depth of analysis you need...
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Geraldo Bustone Wrote:
More trendy, recycled ideas....and to what end? It makes no difference if a meeting has standing participants, sitting participants, or participants who don't show up. The end result is usually a non productive one since most meetings serve only to boost the person who leads it.
Important meetings are not done in five minute bursts with everyone standing. How stupid.
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John Richardson Wrote:
Sit! Fido, Sit!, Now Stand! Fido Stand!
I'll take the indepenent route over such people control....
In a world of technology and remote workers across time zones, status can be done in a 5 min email, or setup a web site for everyone to blog post/wiki to.
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Satyaki Das Wrote:
This is something which is already done by Japanese companies. They are termed "Sunrise Meetings".
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Joshua Jericho Wrote:
Anyone who hates this idea is either A - a mid-level manager whose entire purpose in life consists of concocting meetings, or B - has never had an office job, or particularly a technology job or Government agency job. For those of us who despise A and suffer endlessly with B, we stand and salute this idea! More revolutionary than the phone-bridge.
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Nicole Hamilton Replied:
Or possibly C, a more senior computer scientist who's aware this is just the latest fad.
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Pete Ferling Wrote:
This is nothing new, as anyone in the military should know. I remember in back in '83 at bootcamp we had to stand behind counter high desks in all our classes. Then of course throughout my career our daily meetings were held at morning muster (roll call) with everyone standing while the plan of the day (POD) was read off and getting a days worth of tasks in under five minutes. Nobody complained, and we went right to work.
Then I joined the corporate world and it was meeting after meeting, and when we crawled back to our desks, we were mentally shot and tired. Especially if they served food. Ugh. I often wondered when anyone bothered to get actual work done.
Therefore, I'm OK with all these 'new' social techniques, devices, and networking. It's just the evolution of communication. But like anything else, use it or abuse it.
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Anthony Clemons Wrote:
Excuse my ignorance, but would this approach be used with clients as well? If so, I'm not so sure this would be the best practice when you're trying to show a client that you are willing to "sit down" with him/her and explain the status of their account or whatever it is you're handling. I can see the use for in-house meetings, but to use it for client meetings seems to show a lack of interest in wanting to take the time to hear what the client needs.
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Keith Campbell Replied:
No it's not for client meetings. It's only purpose is for letting your colleagues know what you're working on ... they're meant to be very brief meetings.
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D Coleman Wrote:
Just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic that is software development. Hahahaha!
Another trendy attempt to deal with issues first identified in "The Mythical Man-Month" by Frederick P. Brooks, in 1982.
Next to a super-salesman, the effective software development manager/VP is the most scarce resource on the planet, partially because HR departments don't understand that working before on the same product, in the same language and operating system, has nothing to do with success in the management job.
Success in managing software engineering is an art form, which drives large and small company managements crazy.
And, no, Google doesn't know how to hire them either.
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J. Scott Shipman Replied:
D. Coleman,
Your comments are spot-on. Many years ago I led a small software development group for a large company---unlike any experience in leadership I'd encountered before. Not bad, but different---once I got the hang of it, I enjoyed every minute---but it took a while.
That said, the "stand-up" desk has become popular in some corners. I've taken to standing in my home office during different periods of the day and have found a decrease in lower back pain.
It stand-up meetings work, more power to these companies. Do what works.
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J. Scott Shipman Replied:
D. Coleman,
The Frederick Brooks book is a masterpiece (his new title, The Design of Design is almost as good). I tend to agree with your assessment of managing software engineering groups. Earlier in my career I managed a small software engineering/development group for a large company. A leadership experience unlike anything I'd encountered up to that point. It wasn't bad, but was different and I grew to love it.
Stand-up desk have become popular in many corners. I've tried to work it into my daily routine and have less lower back pain as a result.
That said, if stand-up meetings work, by all means do it.
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ALAN LEVENTHAL Replied:
MMM by Brooks is seminal reading for the s/w engineering professional.
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Guy Wilcox Replied:
Software development is a marriage of engineering and art. And leading successful practicioners have been likened to herding cats. Which, of course, cannot be done (reliably over a long term).
But they can be led.
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Michael Hamman Wrote:
I have to laugh at the comments identifying this practice as "trendy." I have been doing this daily with my management teams for over 10 years, in small, non-technology companies.
The rules: 10 minutes maximum. Updates only - No problem solving. If in-depth discussion or decision making is required, convene only the required participants outside of the stand-up meeting. Participants give a very brief update on their projects, Client issues, problems encountered, operations or people issues, ID any important visitors in the office today, etc. If you have nothing to report to the group today,don't.
This has been a great tool for internal communication, and is an efficient way for the management team to keep in the loop without endless emails and water-cooler conversations.
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Guy Wilcox Replied:
So... a status update meeting. Which could be done with an online blog.
Except that you need face time to reinforce your leadership ranking.
We get it.
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Steve Ropa Replied:
The standup meeting in an agile team is for the team members. Management really does not need to attend, and is actively encouraged to give it a miss. It is not a status meeting so much as a "mini-planning" meeting. "Here is what I plan on doing today, and here are some things that might impede my progress". The goal is to get those impediments aired to perhaps some team members might be able to help remove them.
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Sean James Wrote:
Hi Rahel,
We all have seen that sit down meetings take longer as compared to the stand up meetings but I wonder if the outcome is any different from either of the meeting format. You have elaborately discussed different companies but do you have some study which shows the real impact a stand up meeting would make as compared to the sit down meetings?
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Michael O'Neill Wrote:
This is incorrect and unprofessional
"Holding meetings standing up isn't new. Some military leaders did it during World War I, according to Allen Bluedorn, a business professor at the University of Missouri. "
Who writes this? A professor.
WWI Military meetings are suggested as being the definitive way of making decisions. Really? Here's the way WWI field meetings went -
"Well chaps, its like this - Gerry (The Germans) have just invented machine guns. We don't have any. Gerry has put miles of barbed wired between us. We have no protective equipment for you. You'll just have to get cut to strips by the barbed wire and be blown away by machine guns until some of you make it through! Any questions? No? Good! That's enough motivational waffle from me then! Tally ho! And the best of British luck to you all!"
-------------------------------------------
Then there's this -
"A number of companies have adopted stand-up meetings over the years. Mr. Bluedorn did a study back in 1998 that found that standing meetings were about a third shorter than sitting meetings and the quality of decision-making was about the same.""
Utterly vague unreferenced puff piece that isn't worth the virtual media its posted on.
The only way you get similar quality or decisions is if there is
(i) no one else present or
(ii) everyone is incompetent with nothing to bring to the table.
It this article represents current thinking, it certainly gives a huge insight into how Wall St. heads of department do business and exactly what they've paid their millions for.
Doing very little.
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Franz Gletscher Wrote:
. . . as chair prices continue to plummet.
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Michael O'Neill Wrote:
Nothing new here.
In any design environment I have been in teams are used to holding informal decisive meetings based on a need-to-know basis involving only active participants on a given project. Weekly update/forecasting meetings of senior team members and monthly management meetings distribute the normal information flow, with the provision that these can be short-circuited for any crisis management required - at least once a week.
Seating
Sitting down focuses people on the task at hand, equalizes 'face space' and height, promotes proper meeting chairpersonship and minute taking and exposes any side-bars, which are far more prevalent in stand up groups.
Management, minutes and quality
First rule of management - if it can be measured it can be managed. The only measure of a meeting is the minutes and they are VERY hard to write while standing up. Minute-less five minute meetings are of no value to anyone except perhaps as forgettable management pep-talks designed to give staff the impression they have a say, but by definition actually proving they haven't. If what is said is of value to the company - it should be minuted and disseminated.
The quality of a meeting depends on the information being brought to the table. You cannot present well and take your own notes on feedback if you aren't sitting at a table. You'd need a secretary behind you taking notes, or a video of the event with time to make a transcript afterward - a meeting times two. No. Do it once, well, instead.
If you're presenting something to a meeting expect to be questioned on your research, your initial thoughts, your understanding of your brief and the working out of your proposal. This may require documentary, graphic and or video back up. About the only medium that benefits not just from standing but walking around it is 3D - so if you've a model carry on- otherwise sit down and please concentrate on the task at hand.
In short if you can hold a meeting standing up in five minutes, its probably a waste of time and not worth minuting anyway. Why not carry on regardless...
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Steve Jones Wrote:
The problem with how many companies hold meetings is they either make them too long by including things not really important enough for a meeting instead of a simple email, or they include people that don't really need to be there which end up putting those people to sleep if it's a long enough meeting. If meetings were about important matters, everyone came to them prepared, and everyone that was there needed to be there and provide feedback, then standing probably wouldn't be necessary to keep them short. I don't think it's a bad idea necessarily, but I'm not sure it does anything other than relieving symptoms vs. attacking the source of meeting issues.
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W. R. Taylor Wrote:
Maybe okay for the posture and keeping information meetings short and sweet, but honestly, a well-thought out agenda, bringing the right people together with specific actions before and after the meeting is more meaningful than anything else...
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Jussi Wacklin Wrote:
While I see how this makes the meetings shorter, maybe even more efficient, I still find this as treating the symptoms and not the actual disease. Most corporations have overly complex matrix organisation, long approval chains and poor decision making capability.
Many studies have shown that meeting participants feel that they gain very little out of the meetings, and only 20-30% of topics even concern them. Everlasting status updates, getting everybody on the same line etc. etc. are all result of poor organisational design, processes and leadership.
With strong leadership, you can create a business culture, where empowerment drives the teams without holding continuous meetings. Creative and empowered teams can collaborate fast, efficient and without meetings. With this empowerment comes responsibility. The team performance needs to be evaluated and in some cases, leaders must withdraw those rights momentarily to correct the focus and direction. After correction, the team will resume their task, and receive back their independence.
Again, I understand what companies try to achieve by doing stand-up meetings. I just think they deny there is something fundamentally wrong in the bigger picture. I hope some day they will react to the real issue. Meanwhile, we all continue to stand in the meetings and look like idiots...
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Steve Ropa Replied:
If we take standup meetings by themselves, you are spot on. Actually, they are a small part of a much larger picture, which includes changing the dynamic of who is on a team, and the only evaluation that counts is working software that adds value for the customer.
The extreme level of control that you are conflating with leadership has been found to be extraordinarily ineffective with knowledge workers, especially highly trained knowledge workers such as software developers.
One other aspect of agile mindsets is the law of two feet. If you are neither getting nor adding value to a meeting, it is your responsibility to leave. Unobstrusively, but stand up and leave.
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Ashish Srivastava Wrote:
I have more idea.. company managers should be asked to train the cats to sit in a straight line for one hour.
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Venkatesh Padmanabhan Wrote:
Are you kidding me? I've been in stand-up meetings since 1990. 15 minutes max. No problem solving, pontificating. Status and assignment only. I can't believe that whoever authored this piece got duped into thinking that this is a relatively recent trend. You've gotta get out more, I guess.
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Jason Yip Replied:
"Holding meetings standing up isn't new. Some military leaders did it during World War I, according to Allen Bluedorn, a business professor at the University of Missouri."
I'm assuming the bit about "isn't new" and "World War 1" suggests that the author has not actually been duped into thinking "relatively recent"
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David Kaplan Replied:
Doh! Burn! And by a SME no less. :)
Dan Tracy Wrote:
"Soon after, the team imposed a $1 fine for latecomers."
Wonder if these fines violate state employment laws in places like California?
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ROBERT CRICHTON Replied:
I say make it a tax that finds its way into state coffers. Could be worth Billions in California!
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Gwyneth Pew Wrote:
Whether one stands or sits demonstrates whether one has power to contribute or impact decisions. Large staff meetings or department team meetings or project team meetings, where everyone is standing, are for attendees powerless to contribute or impact decisions. If 2 or 3 individuals speak, then management thinks they have demonstrated sufficient interest in taking ideas from the group. There is peer pressure to shut up so everyone can get back to their desks. The standing meetings are for announcing rules to staff, issuing direction for projects, and perhaps boosting morale by sharing wins/successes. If there is a decision to be made and genuine contribution is expected, those meetings involve fewer individuals who sit. Standing is about lack of power in decision-making. Even three top execs discussing anything of importance will sit.
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David Sassen Replied:
These meetings are for keeping everyone else up to date on what they are doing. They are explicitly not decision-making meetings.
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Doug Johnson Wrote:
It's idiocy like this that drove me out of the corporate world and back to law school. This will be in Dilbert by the end of the year.
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ALAN LEVENTHAL Replied:
DJ, a JD is probably not the answer you're looking for here.
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Jonathan Birge Replied:
Seconded. Going to law school is NEVER the answer, my friend. You've just thrown the baby out with the bathwater. And the baby here, in case the metaphor isn't clear, represents being a productive human being as opposed to a parasite. For all their faults, at least these people in the meeting are trying to BUILD something and add to the pie, not just cut it up into smaller pieces.
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Doug Johnson Replied:
Parasite? Really? Tell me that the next time you get fired because your boss doesn't like the fact that you're black or white or 40 or need some time off because your kid has a serious illness. Tell me that the next time you get arrested after having two drinks at a party or the mechanic charges you $3k for a repair and your car breaks down the next day. The people who are building something are the ones working on product development, distribution logistics, and marketing, not the ones coming up with ridiculous rules for meeting attendance. And try putting together a complicated acquisition or expansion into a new market without some input from the legal department. Good luck defending that Foreign Corrupt Practices Act charge because you didn't realize the manager at that quasi-governmental entity is considered a governmental official under the FCPA.
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Jonathan Birge Replied:
To respond to your later reply: Yes, parasite in the vast majority of cases. Just because lawyers are needed in many situations doesn't mean anything. Lawyers are needed because lawyers created our byzantine legal system in order to keep themselves employed and rich. In a simple and reasonable legal system, one could defend him or herself in most situations. It's no coincidence that the legislators who create our laws and legal systems are themselves lawyers, and the situation they create perpetuates the existence of their bogus profession. The fact that the profession has existed almost as long as prostitution means most people accept the existence of lawyers and essential and inevitable, but it is only for lack of imagination that most people can't envision a world without lawyers sucking at every wound. The truth is we could easily develop legal systems that could be navigated by the average person were the country not run by lawyers.
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Jack Davidson Wrote:
Oh, goody. The latest management fad that does absolutely NOTHING for productivity or the bottom line. Thanks for pointing out some of the companies to stay away from.
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Steve Ropa Replied:
And yet, you are happy to use our products every day. You seem to be OK with the results, they just don't fit your narrow view of how tings should be done. They typical agile shop has a shorter time to market and dramatically improvved ROI. Couple that with a considerable decrease in defects that get into the customers hands, and I am happy to take that over your participation or approval.
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Tom Williamson Wrote:
Straight out of "Dilbert." What's the next insipid management fad - holding meetings naked or with everyone standing on their head? Flip the rubber chicken to decide.
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AJ MESALIC Wrote:
And in other news, employees of the plumbing industry have learned that chewing their food better aids in digestion.
Really I would expect a story like this from Onion.
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Wendy Wolfe Wrote:
My two cents (with it & a dime you'll end up with a nickel):
Software is an odd beast. Tactics & strategy discussions have to be clearly delineated. And in a group effort like writing software - there is a devilish maze of dependencies which daily & clear-cut & standing meetings address quite nicely.
Ms. Rachel Emma Silverman has described a part of the world, but not the universe. The design & strategy still happens when we are sitting, thinking, discussing, etc.
(Grin: not to mention board meetings...)
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David Kaplan Wrote:
In principal, I like this idea though I'm not sure it's an Agile process. Seems more like a common sense thing. And, I'm not sure about the chicken/medicine ball/music thing. Seems kinda gimmicky.
I'm also not a huge fan of being made to come when a bell (or in this case, Bob Marley) rings. Nor being punished or ostracized for being a few minutes late to a meeting. As a designer and developer, I often get in the "zone" when I'm especially productive. If I'm in that zone it often behooves me to take an extra few minutes to complete a task or risk having to ramp up again later. In that sense, it might cost a client or company more in terms of me mentally ramping back up than it would being a few minutes late to a meeting. It's also very frustrating. Lastly, what happens if I have to take an important call from a family member? I think it would resent being punished for being late in that case... even if they were contrite after I informed them of the important family call.
One good thing, though. I wasn't familiar with Steelcase and, after checking out their wares, I really like their stuff and the prices are reasonable for a small business like mine.
I think the bottom line is this: do whatever works. If it means standing up and short meetings. Fine. If it means sitting down and having lunch meetings while you work. Fine. If it means have extended meetings so employees can schmooze and bond. Fine.
There's no one right way to be successful.
David Kaplan
David Kaplan Design, LLC
Philadelphia, PA
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Wendy Wolfe Replied:
I agree that the "chicken/medicine ball/music thing" is odd. But when getting close to a critical deadline, they might be appropriate. (If delivered with humor & an over-sized grain of salt, I suspect http://www.mcphee.com/shop/ has saved more than one behind-schedule project...)
I think that the WSJ was written by someone w/out sufficient exposure to software to understand the process.
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Steve Ropa Replied:
Hi Wendy, actually many of us are working to change the process that has failed us for so many years. The article just scratches the surfface, and I wouldn't have chosen to start with standup meetings to describe this change,but on the whole she does a pretty good job.
I do agree though that humor is vital to all of these things. That part probably should have been stressed more when I look at the responses in this forum. Folks seem to be interpreting this as a controlling mechanism, when it is actually an enabbling one.
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Steve Ropa Replied:
None of these "penalties" or rules are meant to be absolute, but to add a measure of fun to the activities. We shoot for meetings, which are distractions, to take 10-15 minutes of our day, then be done. That is the goal of the standup. Regarding "the zone", please take a look at Robert C. Martin's book "Clean Coders" where he does a great job of exposing the dangers of "the zone" and why it should be avoided. The percieved increased productivvity in that state is actually an illusion, and tends to lead to a high level of overly complex and particularly fragile code.
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David Molden Wrote:
Not rocket science is it? I'm always fascinated, and of course encouraged when tech firms introduce a radical idea many have been using for years. Stand up meetings are not new, and they are effective!
David Molden.
www.quadrant1.com
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Nicolas Biltgen Wrote:
Hello,
I'm I the only one to notice that :
1) There is a dog in the meeting
2) The Dog is sited in a stand up meeting ?
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Luis Blanco Replied:
right on! there are actually two, and one is laying down.
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David Taylor Replied:
I was just surfing to see if anyone else had noticed. Stand up Fido!
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Robert Barlow Wrote:
Perhaps the real "improvement" is to hold fewer meetings?
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Jonathan Stephan Replied:
Robert - you are so right! I thought this was the whole reason collaboration tools were created?
Meetings, even short, tend to be time that could better spend doing actual work.
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Paul Day Wrote:
Sounds like a great idea.... just need to make sure they don't employ anyone who might get/be pregnant or have/develop a disability that gives them difficulty standing as they could be at a disadvantage to the other meeting participants .
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Joe Aveni Wrote:
Always advocated "standing meetings that where short and to the point" and during my tenure in Corporate America it was mis-understood as "why bother showing-up."
Timing is everything in life.
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Ray Logan Wrote:
Some famous quote says "You cannot rush art or science". Software writing is both.
As a software engineer with 20 years experience in development and management I can testify about the sheer stupidity of such meetings. They seem a smart idea to the narrow corporate minds, and the further you are from having a clue about writing and designing software, the more you like them as they give the illusion of activity and keeping schedule under control. In reality, I've seen the quality of software degrading significantly with such procedures. Maintenance, reuse and extendability are the marks of quality software, and those are the first to be sacrificed. Software design is not a brick layering activity which can be quantified to the hour. Countless times you must think weeks before doing anything, or you find a much better idea right in the middle of the project and you rewrite most of it. The extra-time invested pays for itself hundreds of times over in the future. All these fall apart with mindless daily "scrums". Features are added and schedules mostly respected, but that's short term gain for long term pain. Programmers take the shortest and dumbest path and good ideas are lost forever. Countless times I've seen engineers inventing some fake work to present in the meetings. Projects become bloated, buggy, hard to expand. They start to require more and more time, more and more programmers. The corporate type managers are oblivious to all these. The qualifications of most of them are little more then using PowerPoint, project scheduling software, Excel, and suck up to the boss. No wonder daily "scrums" and dumb games with rubber chickens are so popular.
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Sundar Vedaraman Replied:
Exactly...I had seen agile..On the rush to report for every day morning, quality goes down the drain in many instances. Unless Agile is used in small cozy setting with comfort amongst developers.
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Nicole Hamilton Replied:
I agree with your assessment of standups and scrum in general. It's a fad that focuses on the most superficial. But I disagree that it's the corporate types pushing this. It's mostly new managers and new leads who know how to write good code on their own and are now struggling to figure out how to lead a team. This is the latest fad, this what they read, this is what they've heard is cool and this is what they do.
To the extent senior managers seem to be supporting it, I think it's more that they (like me, when I was in that situation) figure it's not worth fighting. Good managers know that people working for them need freedom and support to do things their way, even if their choices seem odd. They need to be able to make their own mistakes and figure out how to recover. Anyway, maybe they do have a better idea. The point is, they're being measured on their results (like, did they deliver the feature on time and did it work), not based on whether they do everything the way their manager would.
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Steve Ropa Replied:
So how long does this havve to be around, and how much market share does it need to capture, before you stop calling it a fad?
I have been doing this for quite some time and at various levels from programmer to sr. management, and it has been successful for me and for my teams. We make money and we enjoy our jobs making products we are proud of. If that defines a fad, I'll be happy to be considered "trendy".
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Laura Dragomir Wrote:
It's a very good work practice if you only strech it to some extent. But what about efficiency and effectiveness of the meeting (unheated stairwell??); arranging the meetings before lunch for a shorten period? I somehow doubt of the results of those meetings, and at the end, the results are the only ones that matters.
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Rod Claar Wrote:
The writer really needs to take a Scrum course. Some of her points are correct, but I think she missed the main goal of delivering more business value faster!
Rod Claar, Certified Scrum Trainer
http://EffectiveAgileDev.com
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scott johnson Wrote:
Agile development if done well - beats Waterfall development hands down. Everyone needs to buy in - "drink the kool-aid", Over a two year project cycle I saw 30 day project sprints delivering results that clients welcomed. Other project life-cycles lumber along weighed down with personnel and artifact overload.
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Phil Clarke Wrote:
In principle, I agree, although this is hardly new. It is all dependant on the meeting type and what is required to be produced.
For instance, a collaborative planning meeting, held with all parties is helped by standing, as it introduces an elemement of egerness to assist.
Having a team breifing, which is similar I believe to the picture is fine, as long as the speaker keeps things short and concise.
For design development however, A table where ideas can be discussed is my prefered venue, remembering that communication is key, be clear, concise and considerate and then you should all avaoid the boring, tedium of "those" meetings that we all know are just not productive....
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Todd Stevens Wrote:
This, to me, seems to be a little extreme. I feel some basic courtesy and common sense goes a long way in assisting in the efficacy of meetings:
- Mandatory on-time attendance
- NO electronic gadgets (unless for presesntations)
- An actual AGENDA (should be a no brainer, but surprisingly not)
- Follow agenda to the letter
- Time-limit
- Only relevant attendees
- Limit the number of vendor attendees to 2 MAX
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Kyle Lyles Replied:
Pretty close to my rules.
We keep meetings between more than two people to an absolute minimum, but when they are necessary, we cover every point you mention. Vendor attendees isn't a hard number, but the absolute minimum. We work in highly technical solutions, so sometimes the vendor may need to bring in several deep experts in each area. But with you in concept and two is the most frequent number.
For years I have charged all employees $50/employee for each meeting they are locked out of. I lock the conference room door on the minute of the meeting. The money goes into a kitty and a drawing is held at the end of the year. The only people allowed to draw are those who haven't donated - the winning employee gets to donate the amount to the charity of their choice.
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Nicole Hamilton Replied:
What a control freak. Are you running a cult? Is there anything more superficial you might also want to collect fines for? How about popping gum or inappropriate use of a smiley in an email? Fortunately, I don't need a job but my goodness, I'd have to be desperate before I'd work for a ninny with silly rules like this.
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Steve Ropa Replied:
" I lock the conference room door on the minute of the meeting."
Get your degree from the Triangle Shirtwaist Company School of Management?
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Matthew Dubins Wrote:
As someone with neuromuscular problems, if I was in an interview for a job where they told me they have stand up meetings, I would look elsewhere.
I don't care if they would let me sit down during their meetings, I would, by definition, feel awkward at each meeting.
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Nicole Hamilton Replied:
It's also less comfortable for older people (like me.) And it's pointless. It's just the latest fad, the tech equivalent of "one-minute managing" or thinking you really did learn everything you need to know in kindergarten.
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Gerald Hanner Replied:
It's not a fad. The military has used it for a long time. But, as General George Marshall told Harry Truman, "War is a young man's game."
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Nicole Hamilton Replied:
> It's not a fad.
It is for software design. And this, too, shall pass.
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Steve Ropa Replied:
If it is a fad, its a surprisingly long lasting fad, as it has been going on for over a decade. The standup is merely one piece of a software development philosohpy that goes way beyond just this meeting. It is designed to be humanistic and welcoming. I have found over the years that the folks who really resist these thing are mostly concerned about losing their illusion of control.
Doug Collins Wrote:
The employees of Atomic Object would acheive even greater levels of collaboration if they would simply join hands in the circle.
Under no circumstances should they invite a fiddle player to join them, however, should they go down that path. The risk of an impromptu square dance breaking out becomes too high to consider.
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Chris Marrou Wrote:
" If someone is rambling on for too long, an employee may hold up a rubber rat indicating it is time to move on."
" If someone is rambling, an employee may hold up a rubber rat indicating it is time to move on."
Nothing is lost by eliminating those four words. It's shorter but works as well, like standing during meetings!
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Richard Martin Replied:
Ah! Someone who puts into practice the idea that "brevity is the soul of wit."
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Nicole Hamilton Wrote:
These stand-up meetings are just the latest and dumbest fad among new managers who think it's about going through the motions. Any I had to attend, I always grabbed a chair or sat on something. Screw it. (Though admittedly, I always out-ranked anyone who called these meetings, so I could get away with it without it seeming like such an act of defiance.)
But what a fantasy that these meetings were any better than when people sat around a table. If they're even shorter, it's only because they're even more routine, tedious and trivial.
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Steve Ropa Replied:
It interests me that you use phrases like "outrank" and "screw it"
as if you are somehow superior to those other members of your team. This attitude is exactly why many companies fail. What might happen if you actually gavve it a chance instead off placed yourself above those with whom you work?
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Dave Dec Wrote:
Oh my god, these were big with the Internet router industry boom of the 90's and employees ran away from them to better more appreciative companies. Same thing will happen here. Making people stand to shorten meetings is an incentive...to leave your company!
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John Cooper Wrote:
All these cutesy innovations start sucking when the air goes out of the tech bubble and the company starts making losses. It's not quite so cute when the stock options are worthless and people are getting laid off each day. I've seen my share of such foolishness in the first bubble. It's amazing how many things people put up with when things are going well, suddenly look stupid when they are not. Suppose you are a manager, the last thing you want to do is pizs off the few productive people in each organization. The old 80/20 rule holds, 80% of the work is done by 20% and those 20% don't have time to think up such inane ideas as stand up meetings. The remaining 80% are bored, lazy and unproductive and spend thier time thinking up bovine excreta ideas like standing up meetings.
Not to mention I, a 235 lb, weightlifting person could hold a 10 lb weight without feeling it, while the same could not be said for a 110 lb woman. I wonder why people have to gather in a room to say "I did this yesterday and I'm going to do this today" Why couldn't it be posted on a web page? Does it acquire magic if it is yelled out? Goes to show the supply of petty m@rons and tyrants is unlimited. What's next, 32 pieces of flair for each person?
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Pete Komar Wrote:
Software development requires a different mindset. 80/20 rules apply to most teams, 20% of the development is done by them, remaining do whatever to fufill the day. Either managing, shooting breeze or think of more silly ideas on how to use Agile. When the company accumlates heavy losses, the novelity has wore off, and failiure is accepted. Stand-up is fad, nothing to do with productivity or sofware development, the same can be accomplished by sitting down. It is somewhat interesting on what toys are used, rats, medicine ball, rubber duck...
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Guy Wilcox Replied:
The 80/20 rule applies to all areas of life.
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Steve Ropa Replied:
The point behind the standup is merely to remind folks that meetings are waste, so we want to keep them as short as possible. Some truly Agile teams have eliminated the standup, since they are able to communicate clearly without them. In a highly functioning agile team, the ideal number of meetings is probably a mzximum of one per iteration, say every two weeks.
In order to achieve this, the team needs to be willing to work together, in the same room, all the time.
The standup is really a small piece of this picture. As I metnioned in another post, if it is a fad, it is the longest running fad I have ever experienced.
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David Taylor Wrote:
From the pic, I thought this was a "quality circle" at first. Are those passe?
Having worked in Japanese corporations for many years, the concept of "making decisions" in a meeting is alien to me. Decisions are made through the slow process of consensus-building prior to the "formal" meeting to seal it. I also don't recall any pets in the meetings unless you count the 'Maneki Neko' that was always present.
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Rajeev Rawat Wrote:
Impractical, cold - for physically challenged. Failure to run meetings is lack of skill, focus.. Shows why some tech solutions still lack soul, value.
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Nicole Hamilton Replied:
Exactly. If you can't run a meeting, get through the agenda and get done without forcing everyone to stand, I don't think you know how to run a meeting.
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Nicole Hamilton Replied:
They also invite too many people to too many standing meetings (both recurring and literally) where people go round the room giving "reports" on minutiae no one listens to, understands or cares about. The exceptions are things like bug triage meetings for a big project, especially as you get close to release, where there's no getting around that you'll inevitably have a long list and lots of stakeholders. For these, you may need a lot of the team in the room to chase down what a complaint is about, whether it really it is a problem and if so, what if anything should be done and who should do it. That may take a while.
At most other meetings that actually matter, you've got 2 or 3 key deciders with whom you need to negotiate a consensus over something and their time is valuable, too. If I call a meeting, I make myself available on time, then grab those 2 or 3 I actually need on my way to the room. Once we sit down (or even in the hall along the way), I feel free to start my meeting anytime I like. Anybody who's later than that may miss some good stuff but realistically, their attendance was optional anyway.
I can't imagine demanding $50 if someone was tardy to my meeting. If they worked for me and it caused a performance problem, there are other ways to deal with that.
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Zoran Kovacevic Wrote:
Style cannot account for innovative content which comes from working with passion (i.e. you must love what you do to be really good at it). All the measures described in the article unfortunately suggest a company should assume it has a bunch of poorly motivated employees who must be "tortured" to produce useful results. Negative motivation will at best produce mediocre results and will never be a part of a truly successful management agenda.
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Vladimir Novikov Replied:
Spot on. I think the real question here is why employees feel the need to pontificate, show off, and ramble.
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Steve Ropa Replied:
Well, unfortunately part of that is the culture of the programmers in general. Most of us find sitting in a leather chair while some "suit" goes on and on about stuff we really don't care about is the real torture. Standing up so that the meeting only lasts ten minutes is absolutely worth it.
There is a misunderstanding that standing up is a negative motivator or some form of punishment. To the contrary, it is designed to be emulative of the water cooler conversation. Once we get sharing what we are up to out of the way, we go do other stuff that is more fun.
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Randall Shannon Wrote:
I love this. I hate long winded meetings. Years ago when I worked at a meeting heavy company where the culture was long meetings, usually discussing things to death, people would show up with their muffins, coffee, ready to settle in. I initiated bullet point meetings...quick and to the point. Come prepared and send email briefs prior, letting us get back to the action. The culture there was the culprit. Most people hated the long meeting, they just needed permission to change.
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Dave Marney Wrote:
Stand-up meetings don't really need to be done face to face. Everyone joins a common chat, and sends a message with two elements (what I did, what I'm doing) when they join. Then the chat remains open for people to discuss things that might be holding each other back. No need to have a moderator for this.
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Gil Russell Wrote:
Actually all you need is a timed agenda and the leadership to stick with it...,
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David Taylor Replied:
Leadership, ah ha! And perhaps leave the distracting dogs at home.
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Roz Bennetts Wrote:
Bloomberg had this policy a while back even for visitors which I think was going a bit far. They built cubicles, about twice the size of a phone box with a table/ledge at leaning height and glass on all sides for this purpose.
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Richard Hobart Wrote:
Sounds like the daily first morning meeting play from the book "Death by Meeting"
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Jason Yip Replied:
Yes, it's very close
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BENJAMIN YING Wrote:
Seriously? This is news?
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Angus Johnson Wrote:
This what happens when the true leaders are pushed aside by an army of MBAs with no real hands on experience doing the work in the trenches. What a stupid lame idea
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Steve Ropa Replied:
i've been involved in the Agile Software movement for about ten years, and I can tell you that the daily standup is anything but lame. This meeting is of the team, by the team and for the team. The entire idea came from people in the trenches. As a matter of fact, it is the MBA's who are fighting us, as opposed to the folks who are actually responsible for making things happen.
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Maggie Rooney Wrote:
Our company has the worst meetings ever. We will be swamped with work, then we all go to a meeting run by some mid-level administrator with an agenda, who sits there and pontificates for 45 minutes. How is that a "meeting"? It is more of a "lecture". Complete and utter waste. of time.
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Jason Yip Wrote:
A number of the comments reflect misconceptions about Agile-style daily standups so I wrote a post to summarise and address them:
http://jchyip.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/misconceptions-about-daily-stand-up.html
Please tell me if I've misinterpreted or missed anything.
I've also written a much more extensive article about my views about what makes a good Agile daily stand-up: http://martinfowler.com/articles/itsNotJustStandingUp.html
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Steve Ropa Replied:
Sadly, your li didn't work on my android tablet, but I have seen enough of your blogs and posts on Agile over the years to suggest others take a look at it.
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Curtis Vaughan Wrote:
Sure, all the hype for efficient meetings and then the rest of the day???
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Steven Brown Wrote:
Stand-Up meetings have been around for some time now. However, they do not replace the need for well run and organized sit down meetings that have published agendas with old business and take a-ways for the next meeting.
Stand-Up meetings are best used first thing each and every morning to give quick updates of relevant events of the previous day and night. Heads-up and early warnings of incidents or problem reports being worked on, Assigning priorities and resources to incidents and problems. Volunteering help or suggestions for troubleshooting or problem solving may be offered. Major Enterprise or Community announcements should be presented if relevant. The meetings should be no longer than 15 or 20 minutes and are not used as a platform for reprimands, criticizing, or being condescending. The meetings are meant to strengthen team work and communication and are not a platform for pontificating or speeches.
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michael heery Wrote:
the photocopier was the ruination of man companys, whe the zerox changed to mass copying we had girls all day at copiers and sending out pointless memos and generatig masses of paperwork and we all lost sight of what work was about,.then so many accountants became bossses over decent engineers so we had stock checks so often and nothing moved them days,.,ahahha.
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Randy Mathis Wrote:
The Agile practices have become ritualistic. The problem is that the Agile methodologies lack a system of coherent software thought and a consistent unified body of knowledge. They only have the Agile Manifesto. There is no underlying perception, paradigm, and principles that provide a basis for their beliefs, behaviors and practices. Without a conceptual framework and underlying scientific principles that provide direction, their beliefs, behaviors and practices are based upon individual streams of consciousness that has no basis in science.
http://softwaregrail.blogspot.com/2012_02_01_archive.html
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LaTanya Johnson Wrote:
Agile-tag-ile or whatever they want to call it today. If you walk into your local retailer, (Target or WalMart) at the beginning of an early shift and/or team meeting you will find ALL of them standing for their meeting. By the time you would walk to the other side of the store you will hear chanting and applause signifying the end of their meeting. They get right to the nitty-gritty. Is standing a good idea? I say, 'Yes it is!' There is a chance that it could cut out my hearing the use of the word "perspective" 25-40 times when everyone HAS to say something. I think this would lower the crowdedness of conference rooms and heighten employees enthusiasm to attend meetings that will last less than 15 minutes. I would love to see it done. I actually might try it one day by clearing out the chairs in one of the room to see how it works and hear everyone's reaction. (LOL-I wish I could record it for you). GREAT idea. Let's bring the retailer meeting into the corporate meetings! hip hip hooray! Hip Hip Hooray!
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