Daily Scrum: Sitting or Standing?

Sitting or Standing? How should the daily status meeting go?

Beyond the three questions – Scrum says very little about what should go into the daily stand-up.

There was an entire conversation recently on Scrum Development on this very subject

Standing

• Nobody wants to stand for very long – keeps the meeting short
• We’re away from our computers so there are fewer distractions
• We stand in a semi-circle and face the task board

• Keeps the conversation focused on the tasks and helps us to keep from drifting off track
• Helps us avoid reporting to a leader – instead we’re reporting to the rest of the team
• Standing can be done in the team area and doesn’t require a meeting room – this helps stay in the context of our work.
• Standing feels like it keeps the energy level up

Sitting

• Some people become distracted and read email etc.

Other Best practices

• No cell phones, checking email on Crackberries
• No side conversations
• Only people with skin in the game (or tasks to complete) may talk, others may attend but listen quietly
• The meeting should be held at the earliest moment people are able to attend every day. Some people wait until the daily scrum is held to start work.
• Time boxed the meeting should last at most 15 minutes.
• Not in the office: call in or email your status in (weaker because you don’t know what the rest of the team is doing).

One of the most important points that I see that gets missed: The standup is about reporting to the rest of the team, not the ScrumMaster or Manager.

But as with anything in Scrum try all the variations and discuss the results in the next retrospective.

Other relevant posts:
It’s Not Just Standing Up: Patterns of Daily Stand-up Meetings
Variations on the Daily Stand-up
Dysfunctional Daily Scrum video found via Mishkin
Daily Status Meeting Dysfunction