I'm on my fourth team now since 2005 where I have helped successfully employ scrum, and stand ups are a great part of it. A couple of the biggest mistakes I see

I'm on my fourth team now since 2005 where I have helped successfully employ scrum, and stand ups are a great part of it. A couple of the biggest mistakes I see being made are: 1) not correctly identifying "chickens" and "pigs"[1]. Pigs get to talk in a standup, chickens do not. In fact any interaction with the pigs and chickens should go entirely through the scrum master (and not during the standup). If chickens want to come to the standup it is to observe only. 2) conversations. The standup is not the time for conversation. The best method I've employed is to have each person specifically answer three questions: what did you do since the last standup? What are you going to do between now and the next one? Are you impeded in any way? The last one is where conversations often start. Scrum master needs to stop those, identify the people who need to talk after the stand up, and move things along. When you follow those as hard fast rules, standups shouldn't take more than N*3 minutes where N is the number of pigs. [1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chicken_and_the_Pig http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chicken_and_the_Pig