stop-slop

If your team has fewer than ten people, it’s time to stop holding daily standups. Not because communication doesn’t matter, but because a scheduled round of “yesterday, today, blockers” often does less to coordinate work than a handful of timely conversations. On a small team, everyone sits close enough to the work—whether in the same room or a shared chat—to raise a blocker when it happens. Waiting until tomorrow’s meeting isn’t collaboration; it’s a delay disguised as process. The meeting itself may take only fifteen minutes, but its footprint is bigger: people interrupt focused work, rehearse updates, and listen to information that doesn’t change what they’ll do next. Small teams should use their size as an advantage, not borrow rituals built for coordination at greater scale. Replace the daily status circle with brief written updates where useful, direct conversations when dependencies arise, and meetings called to make a decision—not merely to prove that everyone is busy.