Why is it not important to follow guidelines when conducting Daily Standup Meetings?

Abstract: Background: Agile practices are widely used in the software development process to quickly adapt and respond to the challenges occurring during the whole software development lifecycle. Daily standup meetings are a common practice to share an update about the status and impediments with the team. However, how much value this practice adds to help the team members is uncertain. Objective: The purpose of this study is to find how daily standup meetings should be conducted with effectiveness. This study aims to identify that there are different needs for different teams depending upon the factors like team size, geographic location, and project progress and how these should be focused on when planning and conducting daily standup meetings. Method: This case study was conducted on two different projects of IT software development companies. A total of 10 people were interviewed who have expert knowledge of Agile ways of working and 34 digital DSMs attended to observe the meetings. Thematic analysis was performed on the collected data. In addition, feedback was collected from different people working in those teams and quantitative analysis is performed on data collected to perform a validation on the results of the thematic analysis. Results: The result indicates that DSM is an important meeting in Agile ways of working and this helps not only with status monitoring or planning work but also helps people to connect as a team. Impediments are fixed at a fast pace and deviations are tracked without delays. Further different factors like team size, duration, frequency, and participants are studied to find how these should be considered when planning and conducting DSMs. Each team has its own needs, so to make DSM more effective, team needs should be studied and understood well before conducting DSM. Conclusion: Daily standup meetings are one of the crucial meetings which help in the success of the project when conducted in an effective way. It is not just a status update meeting but also a place where the full team comes together to work towards a common goal and discuss and highlight important information. So, it is important to consider all factors for its effectiveness so that the project can benefit from this meeting for better progress.