The Agile Way

The Agile Way

Share this post

The Agile Way
The Agile Way
A Practical Advice to Shorten Daily Stand-up Meetings in Software Projects

A Practical Advice to Shorten Daily Stand-up Meetings in Software Projects

Daily Automate End-to-End (via UI) Regression Testing.

Zhimin Zhan's avatar
Zhimin Zhan
Nov 12, 2023
∙ Paid
1

Share this post

The Agile Way
The Agile Way
A Practical Advice to Shorten Daily Stand-up Meetings in Software Projects
Share
Credit: Image 1, Image 2
  • Long (stand-up meetings)
    According to the classic “The Art of Agile Development” book, 15 minutes is already too long.

from the classic “The Art of Agile Development” book, “https://www.jamesshore.com/v2/books/aoad1/stand_up_meetings,
  • Common
    Over the last 16 years, most of the software projects I have been involved with or witnessed had long (30 min+) stand-up meetings daily. Typically, the team members talk about the user stories they have been assigned (with Jira open) one by one.

  • Bad
    The purpose of ‘stand-up’ is to make meetings short. In fact, in many software projects, “stand-up meetings’ became ‘sit-down meetings’.

Table of Content
∘ How shall ‘Daily Stand-up Meetings’ be? and vs. the reality.
∘ Most Attempts to Shorten Stand-up Meetings Failed, Why?
∘ How dose my approach solve the problem?

How shall ‘Daily Stand-up Meetings’ be? and vs. the reality.

In fact, most software professionals understand what a proper daily stand-up meeting shall be, as explained in the classic “The Art of Agile Development” book:

https://www.jamesshore.com/v2/books/aoad1/stand_up_meetings

There is even a specific suggested time limit for each person.

https://www.jamesshore.com/v2/books/aoad1/stand_up_meetings

Some might wonder, “How could that be possible? The operations in Jira alone, such as finding the user story and moving/updating the user stories, probably take 30 seconds.” That’s because your team did Agile wrong: user stories in Jira or like 😱.

I trust Kent Beck more than anyone on Agile and follow his advice. I don’t use Jira alike at all for my software development. How do I manage user stories? User Story Card, yes, on physical index cards. For more, check out User Story Card Clarified.

Some might say: “We don’t use Jira, but our daily stand-up meetings are still quite long”. Getting rid of Jira does not necessarily guarantee proper short stand-up meetings. To answer that, we need to understand why the meetings are getting longer and longer.

Most Attempts to Shorten Stand-up Meetings Failed, Why?

Keep reading with a 7-day free trial

Subscribe to The Agile Way to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.

Already a paid subscriber? Sign in
© 2025 Zhimin Zhan
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start writingGet the app
Substack is the home for great culture

Share