Ways to make the daily standup/morning meeting more fun

Cancel it, problem solved for all

A cromulent idea that would probably embiggen morale.

If you project tracking is done in email still, you have bigger problems than meeting.

There's a lot of value in facing up to colleagues admitting things, it's too easy to obscure the truth in online formats.

It's fun if it's short, keep it to 5 min and nobody will dread it.

A daily standup should take no more than 15 mins.

Plenty of tools make status updates very easy e.g. The simple Kanban board should speak for itself.

It's not a stand-up if you are doing it remotely.

It doesn't need to be "fun". And it certainly won't be fun if "forced fun". Keep the updates brief and on point. The "fun" comes from having the right people/personalities working together as a team in a friendly and sociable environment/atmosphere.

There's no better fun than organised fun

I haven't been a people manager for about 14 years. And I have no desire to be again.

Kinda funny to be called "outdated" on thread which started with someone suggesting buzzword-bingo and a dictionary-challenge as a way to make meetings fun. Yawn. It's about 30 years since I played games like that.

30 minutes is way too long. If 2 or more people need to discuss something in more detail, break off to a separate meeting at the end of the stand up. It should really just be a quick update on what you are working on and if anything is blocking or you need help. Certain people can have a tendency to waffle on a bit given the chance, so the lead needs to make sure it is kept short.

It's a good idea, but how can we make it work if some/all people are remote? I guess the company could send out a bottle to everyone.

They are badly managed by so many is the problem. Often over taken by the scrum masters interests. I just stopped going to certain meetings run by certain people as they were basically a meeting for them to have information spoon fed to them. Why somebody wants me at a meeting to read out an online report is just annoying. My boss used me as a gauge to if a meeting had a point and said if I didn't see a point don't go. I had 6 different daily scrum meetings at one point and eventually went to just one.

If you manage a team you do not need those team members to attend your update meeting to your boss. The who point of them is to be quick and point out the unusual.

This.

Stand up meetings should not be a forum for detailed discussions. The team manager and the scrum master should shut these down and focus on where help may be needed. Max 15 minutes

It isn't an Irish thing

The best advice I got from a manager was to never attend a meeting that didn't have a bulleted agenda in the invite. It worked a treat. I would decline invites with those exact words - "Declined - No agenda".

She also told me to stop going to regular meetings that didn't have written minutes and actions coming from them each week. Those are just talking shops.

It worked a treat, I cut my meeting attendance significantly and was able to do some 'deep work'.

If anyone complained about my non-attendance, I sent them up the line and she always had my back. Her actions instilled a culture of meeting best practices which I continue to endorse.

SCRUM is like getting battery hens to report each morning on how many eggs they are going to lay today, how many they layed yesterday and why they are blocked.

For whatever reason I clicked on this thread and now I feel a bit dead inside.

Everyday I thank the Lord Jesus that I don't work in an office environment.

Long meetings with no direction, no agenda, no action items don't really provide much value. It also involves pulling people away from productive work.

In software development there needs to be communication and collaboration on projects that can be quite complicated. So, some level of meetings are definitely required. The issue is that there are certain types of people that like the sound of their own voice and "busywork" rather than doing actual work. That is the kind of meeting I was talking about. Thankfully, we have a 5 min meeting each afternoon and then just the odd longer meeting with a small number of people who need to be there.