The daily stand-up meeting: A grounded theory study

Abstract

Context: The daily stand-up meeting is one of the most used agile practices but has rarely been the subject of empirical research. Aim: The present study aims to identify how daily stand-up meetings are conducted and what the attitudes towards them are. Method: A grounded theory study of the daily stand-up meeting was conducted with twelve software teams in three companies in Malaysia, Norway, Poland and the United Kingdom. We interviewed 60 people, observed 79 daily stand-up meetings and collected supplementary data. Results: The factors that contributed the most to a positive attitude towards the daily stand-up meeting were information sharing with the team and the opportunity to discuss and solve problems. The factors that contributed the most to a negative attitude were status reporting to the manager and spending too much time; both the frequency and duration of the meeting were perceived to be too much. Based on our results, we developed a grounded theory of daily stand-up meetings and proposed evidencebased guidelines on how to organize them. Conclusion: Organizations should be aware of the factors that may affect attitude towards daily stand-up meetings and should consider our proposed guidelines to improve the way the meetings are conducted.

Are Daily Stand-up Meetings Valuable? A Survey of Developers in Software Teams

“…Further, because meeting satisfaction is part of overall job satisfaction [13], it is important to understand what makes this meeting valuable for team members. In a recent, qualitative study of thirteen teams (in Norway, Poland, UK and Malaysia) we found that the attitudes towards DSMs were slightly more positive than negative [5]. However, the level of satisfaction varied within the teams.…”

“…The personal gain from the meeting is thus reduced. Moreover, being able to have quick problem-solving discussions in the DSM make developers perceive the DSM as more valuable [5]. Senior developers often work on more complex tasks, and it might be that high complexity problems are seldom discussed at the meeting because they require too much time.…”

“…The DSM then becomes an additional daily interruption, which reduces the satisfaction with such meetings. Perceiving the meeting to have too high frequency negatively affects the attitude towards DSMs [5]. Moreover, meeting load affects employees well-being [18] so companies should be sensitive to the number of meetings the developers have to attend.…”

“…According to Boden [4], such meetings can be characterized as informal. The practice gives team members an overview of what other team members are doing and is therefore an important mechanism to increase information sharing and team awareness [5]. The meeting is often conducted standing up to keep it brief and avoid lengthy discussions, hence the term "stand-up meeting".…”

“…Challenges include finding a suitable time of day, keeping the time limit and whether it should be held daily and standing up [10]. We have previously found DSMs to last 63% longer when team members sit rather than stand during the meeting [5]. Another challenge is members reporting their status to the team leader, resulting in team members not paying attention to each other [8].…”