If you find that people need to discuss so much that it takes too long and people aren't paying attention, those discussions need to go into another meeting.
Having a good product owner is important for coordinating meetings in general. Standups should be for tracking progress on tasks and nothing more. If someone is blocked they should briefly state why and follow up ASAP, but after the standup.
> Standups should be for tracking progress on tasks and nothing more.
Then what's the point? I probably don't care about someone's status in the first place, and when I do a big fat notification informs me when the status has changed the second it changes. "Duh. I'm still working on it, obviously." doesn't tell me anything.
> If someone is blocked they should briefly state why and follow up ASAP
If someone is blocked by my doing, they would have already told me 23.5 hours[1] before the scheduled meeting came around, when they became blocked. I don't need to hear it a second time. If it has nothing to do with me, I don't care. What's the point?
[1] Or even longer if not on a daily meeting schedule. Way too long if you sit around and wait for the meeting to finally come around before talking to anyone.
I used to think like this before I worked on projects with more coordination and visibility than just other devs.
The daily standups are for management and whoever else is invited from time to time. You're 100% correct that you shouldn't wait for tomorrow's standup to discuss something technical with another developer. You shouldn't be getting lost in the weeds during standups anyway. That's one of many reasons standups can take forever.
Also, a well run standup can be as simple as one person sharing their screen while walking through the tasks and asking yes/no questions. You don't need everyone to speak all the time because as you said that wastes time. Anyone can read the issues statuses at any time or query what they need.
These meetings are for more insightful questions than that from management: "You and a couple of other devs on this story said your tasks are blocked because this servicenow ticket for another team is still in progress? I've reached out and they said they're going to be done by noon. Will you complete your in progress tasks by then or should we reassign or push their dates back so you can continue this higher priority ticket?" ... "Great I'll update the backlog for the sprint starting next week and your time in the capacity tracker" ... "You scheduled PTO? We've got everything all set for the next sprint so no worries. Have a nice vacation!" It's not a dream. Agile done right is like this.
If you hate the idea of a meeting like this it's possible your managers suck and don't listen to you. They're supposed to be working for you to keep the runway clear. When they hear all the status updates all at once in daily meetings they should be getting ready for the next sprint and coming up with good ideas behind the scenes. That includes bringing in resources, making sure dependent tasks on other projects are completed so you don't get blocked, etc.
It would be nice if standup was actually about asking active questions only because then I wouldn't mentally fall asleep during it. In reality its almost always about just calling out names and hearing someone ramble until maybe you wake up enough to ask a follow-up question.
Yes, once every thousand days (made up, but not too far from reality) when there actually is something for the group to come together and discuss, the standup is a useful tool. Although you're probably better to just schedule the meeting only when there is something to discuss. Gathering everyone each day just to see is kind of wasteful.
Granted, that waste keeps people employed. The tech layoffs of late is unquestionably because "Agile" isn't cool anymore, and those hours wasted to standups are now, by and large, put to productive use instead.
That doesn't sound like Agile, at least not the Manifesto one. Agile is pretty clear that there are no managers. It, ultimately, offers suggestions of what you need to think about if you are to move to an ad-hoc organization structure. For instance, per the 12 Principles, "Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project." There is no room for a manager in that. There is no independent "keeping the runway clear" or "coming up with ideas behind the scenes". That's the work developers and business people are doing – why they are working together.
Here's a few more:
* "Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale." – Translation: Without a manager keeping tabs on everyone's progress, the easiest way for the team to stay on top of progress is to see it.
* "Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done." – Translation: Don't accept people into your group who need someone (i.e. a manager) to hold their hand.
* "The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation." – Translation: There is no manager ensuring everyone is aligned and on the same page.
* "The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams." – Translation: With no manager to organize the group, you need to figure out who is going to do what on your own.
* "At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly." – Translation: You don't have a manager watching over to see where improvement can be made. Figure it out for yourselves.
Whether or not Agile is suitable for your organization, or any organization!, is another matter. Indeed, one should not accept Agile into their life just because it has a catchy name. Probably not at all. One must remember that the Agile signatories live in a different reality to most developers.
> If you hate the idea of a meeting like this it's possible your managers suck and don't listen to you.
Whether or not they are listening, I'm not sure what I would want to tell them? What I do know from many, many years of experience is that when you have a good manager, you won't even know they exist. A manager who needs to gather the group around the campfire each day is decidedly not a good manager. Heck, even most staunch standup supporters will tell you that managers shouldn't be invited to the standup as it easily becomes a crutch for bad management.
Having a good product owner is important for coordinating meetings in general. Standups should be for tracking progress on tasks and nothing more. If someone is blocked they should briefly state why and follow up ASAP, but after the standup.