look, let's all just admit it ok? it's fine, we all do it, but it's better if we just stop pretending
I didn't do anything
because it can't just be me who, on the rare occasion they haven't zoned out, knows that we're all talking crap in a standup? In any team, in any industry in all the companies I've worked for, standups have the same feel. someone trying to smoothly bridge the gap between what they have actually done, and what doesn't sound like they have taken the piss. I don't care if it's because some non-sprint work took priority, your local decided it hated you or you were just playing World of Warcraft and telling yourself the code was compiling, it doesn't stop it being obvious.
"PLT-0123, yeah so we move that forward but obviously I looked into the DB and you know there was a lot of migrations to consider and really there's the whole BE part so I'm going to have to circle back to that because I need to dive into and investigate the FE part and see if we can refactor it because we talked about..."
and on and on it goes. and no one's listening, and no one cares. so I'll say it again, please can we just all agree it's ok to admit it; "I didn't do anything".
And my weird pet peeve aside for a minute, I think it's actually really important because:
If you can't admit you didn't progress sprint work in a standup then there is no point in any of the sprint ceremonies.
Ultimately, the standup should be your bread and butter. it's your most common meeting and if you don't feel safe and free in the meeting you have daily with your team then I'm going to wager you probably aren't comfortable in the retro, or the planning, or holding your hands up and saying you have no idea how cache invalidation works and we'd better point it at 13 to account for my complete lack of awareness.... ahem, well you get what I mean.
As soon as standups become only about progress and have no room for inconvenience then they stop really being much more than a performance. and if we're all going to turn up to just act out 'doing business' then we could at least make it a little less monotonous.
As with all things in life, I believe something should be useful or at least fun
but here's the long and the short of it. I love standups. I think they can be fun. I think they can be useful. I think they are a functional and flexible tool in the arsenal of software development.... it's just a shame I've never actually had one. and if you think you have then I challenge you. in your next standup make up a ticket number when you speak. Or when the meeting's over, ask any colleague to just give a quick recap of what was said. or, if you're feeling really brave, when it comes to your turn with no preamble, caveat or hesitation, simply say
I didn't do anything