Standup meetings: why they only work if they last 15 minutes

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 08:03:00 +0100

First Monday of the project. New team, new methodology, new hopes. The PM proposes a daily standup. Everyone nods. “Fifteen minutes, standing up, three questions. Simple.”

The first week works. At 9:15 it starts, by 9:28 everyone is back at their desk. Each person speaks for two minutes, blockers are flagged, people move on. Pure efficiency.

The second week someone raises a hand mid-round: “Can I quickly explain the problem I’m having with the integration?” Five minutes of technical discussion between two people. The other six stand there listening to something that doesn’t concern them.

The Yes-And technique: how I defused a meeting that was about to blow up

Tue, 13 Jan 2026 08:03:00 +0100

It was a Thursday afternoon, one of those meetings that was supposed to last an hour on paper. Seven of us, connected on a call. The agenda was straightforward: decide the migration strategy for an Oracle database from on-premise to cloud.

Straightforward, sure. On paper.

Twenty minutes in, the meeting had turned into a duel.

🔥 The spark #

On one side was the infrastructure manager. Experienced, twenty years of datacenters behind him. His position was rock-solid: lift-and-shift migration, zero changes to the architecture, we move everything as-is.

Meeting on Ivan Luminaria

Standup meetings: why they only work if they last 15 minutes

The Yes-And technique: how I defused a meeting that was about to blow up

🔥 The spark #