Why do we stand up at the daily stand up?

A few weeks back, I saw this picture in a Scrum Master Community on Facebook and while I added comments to the thread, my brain started spinning and I asked myself “Why do I feel it’s important to stand up at the daily stand up?”. The answer that is typically written in Scrum posts and forums is that it keeps the meeting short because nobody wants to physically stand there for longer than 15 minutes while people talk and drag on, and if you sit down you are more comfortable and it provides a greater chance the meeting will carry on. While I can buy that, I don’t truly believe that’s the important reason behind why we stand up and other method’s can keep a meeting short and on track as well.

Note: I want to go ahead and get this out of the way; my thoughts on this are likely controversial and even perhaps a bit far fetched, but hear me out for a minute.

When I went through Air Force boot camp, we woke up every morning at 4:30 am and the very first thing we did was make our beds. However, it wasn’t as simple as just pulling the covers up and making sure the bed looked somewhat presentable.  You had to practically strip the bed and start from scratch to ensure you had proper hospital corners and there better not be a wrinkle to be found. There was a fold over your pillow that had to be so tight that the drill sergeant could pull it up slightly with his finger and once he removed his finger, it would snap back down like a rubber band. Did making our beds in this manner really better prepare us to fight a war? Absolutely not! However, I once heard a very wise 4 star general speak on this manner and he stated very well that:

• By doing this, you start your day off by accomplishing something very first thing. This kick starts your day and makes it productive.
• It instills the behavior of paying attention to details. If you can’t make your bed properly, how can they trust you to operate machinery or to make battle plans that involve the lives of other individuals. Not paying attention to details can mean getting your friend blown up by a road side bomb. It’s all about the details. 

Every member of the armed forces goes through this during basic training, and most, if not all, find this a pointless task at the time. However, it’s one of the “trials” you go through that ultimately builds a bond and takes a unit from being a group of individuals and turns them into a team that works and fights together.

Now before you think I’m trying to compare Scrum to war, let me give you one other brief analogy. I graduated from Alabama and I’m a huge Alabama football fan. The team has won 4 National Championships in the last 7 years which is an incredible feat. One thing you often hear Nick Saban talk about is “The Process”. Every detail is planned out by his coaching staff and they push the team harder than any other program in America. Ask any of the 18-22 year olds on the team whether they like everything they go through in the hot 90-degree summer heat and they’ll tell you probably not. According to Nick Saban, the difference between the teams that won, aka hit their sprint goal(s), and those that didn’t, is all about whether they cut corners or acted as individuals instead of a team.

So why do I believe it’s important to stand up at the daily stand up? It’s one way of saying to your team, “This team is important to me and I’m committed to it’s success.” It’s one way of showing you respect the team and will do your part to ensure we hit the sprint goal. It may seem like such a small thing whether you are standing up or sitting down when you gather around your [Story Wall, Task Wall, whatever you use for stand up], but it’s little details like this that bond a team together and can be the difference between good teams and great teams.

In the book “Scrum:The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time” by Jeff Sutherland, he talks about how Scrum teams can produce incredible productivity gains (he mentions teams that have increased productivity by 1200%) by adopting Scrum. Reading between the lines though, I don’t think these teams experienced those types of gains just by adopting Scrum practices; I think they were truly bought in as a team and operated as a team in conjunction with Scrum practices. I imagine those teams were truly committed to a productive daily stand up, were truly committed to each other during meetings instead of staring at laptops, were truly committed to working together on a daily basis in order to achieve far more than the collective group could do individually.

With all of that being said, will I force my teams to stand up at the daily stand up? Absolutely not! I’m a servant leader and here for them, not the other way around. Will I continue to encourage them into these types of behaviors? Every single day. It’s the small things, like standing up at stand up, that I believe truly brings a team together and separates good teams from great teams. It’s in the details of the hundred’s and thousands of interactions the team has that propels them to great things.

What do you think? Am I completely off base? Please leave comments and let me know your views on this.