Long, low-energy stand up meetings tend to distract and mute the day

Martin Fowler has recently post a nice paper about patterns of daily Stand-up meetings (It's Not Just Standing Up).

I completely agree with him when he says that sharing commitment is one of the stand-up meeting success keys.

"Making daily commitments to each other as a team is the most important goal of daily stand-ups. Sharing commitment is more important than sharing progress or status. This is not to say that an observer will not have a sense of progress and status from the stand-up, but this is secondary to team members publicly committing to each other, and identifying obstacles that prevent them from meeting their commitments."

Obviously, when this commitment objective is not targeted, this may lead to situations like:

"Team members are facing and talking to the manager or meeting facilitator instead of to the team. This indicates that the daily stand-up is for the manager/facilitator when it is actually supposed to be for the team. "

To avoid the skids and to fully benefit from this kind of meeting, it is useful to keep in mind the three points that every participant must quickly address:

• What did I accomplish yesterday?
• What will I do today?
• What obstacles are impeding my progress