That's about right. But what I see happening, when done right, is that people are forced to talk about what's holding them up. Without it, people tend to just

That's about right. But what I see happening, when done right, is that people are forced to talk about what's holding them up. Without it, people tend to just keep spinning their wheels instead of asking for help. With Scrum, instead of asking for help, they're forced to just state their situation, and someone will jump in and help if they can... Or at least the team lead will know about the situation within a day, instead of finding out a week later when the thing is due. Done wrong, and it's a grueling 30-60 minute ordeal that wastes everyone's time. It's important to keep everyone to the 3 talking points. What did you do, what's blocking you, and what will you work on. It also keeps the team up to date with what's going on, and I know that I personally feel disconnected without that information. Do we scrum? Nope. But we do have a meeting every morning that also doubles as a time to chat about any random things we like, and it usually runs about an hour. We take care of business stuff some time during the hour, depending on how excited someone is to talk about non-work stuff, but the work stuff can take as little as a few minutes, or as long as the hour, depending on what's happening. Joining the meeting is mandatory for programmers and project manager, but staying in the meeting isn't. That said, I don't think any programmer has ever left early unless there's some emergency. It's optional for sysadmins, and each of them has treated it differently. I think it works best when they at least pop in and say "Hi", but we leave it up to them.