Ask Slashdot: Are Daily Stand-Up Meetings More Productive?

__roo writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that an increasing number of companies are replacing traditional meetings with daily stand-ups. The article points out that stand-up meetings date back to at least World War I, and that in some place, late employees 'sometimes must sing a song like "I'm a Little Teapot," do a lap around the office building or pay a small fine.' Do Slashdot readers feel that stand-up meetings are useful? Do they make a difference? Are they a gimmick?"

Comments

Curious

[Ethanol-fueled]

It's curious that they mention the military first doing stand-up meetings - when i was in the military, you stood up only when you were about to fall asleep, but that's all that needs to be said about that.

In the civilian world, if you have meetings every day, it's because your boss or some other important idiot is a bottleneck in the process and they need daily reinforcement of common sense, at the expense of department productivity.

Re:Curious

[squiggleslash]

You think that's bad? I had to go to the doctor the other day, and he was all "Well, let's cure that cancer of yours" (or whatever it was) and I was like "Hold on a moment, do you know Bresenham's line algorithm?

Would you believe he didn't? I had to NOT merely describe the algorithm, AND explain how to use sign changes and axies swaps to ensure any line could be drawn, but even what a damned BITMAP was. I walked right out, I wasn't going to trust HIM to heal my brain tumor.

Also the so-called plumber didn't know what a singleton was. I'm getting impatient now, I've rigged up a siphon to suck water out of the laundy room into the yard, but I haven't found a single pumber yet who knows a damned thing about programming.