The Standup That Forgot to Stand

The daily standup is called a standup because standing up was supposed to keep it short. Tired legs, brief meeting. It was a beautiful idea, briefly.

Then someone discovered chairs. And the standup became a sitdown, and the sitdown grew a tangent, and the tangent grew a tangent of its own, and forty minutes later nine people have each learned the one update that was relevant to them, surrounded by eight that were not.

Three sentences is the whole contract: what I did, what I am doing, what is in my way. Anything longer is a meeting in disguise, and it deserves the only incantation powerful enough to end a standup — “let’s take that offline.” Say it with love. Then actually take it offline.