Stand-ups are only an interruption if they are poorly scheduled. I accept that sometimes it isn't possible to schedule one, such as when there is a large, geographically-distributed team. However, I have rarely seen them take place outside of the first 30 minutes to one hour of the working day, in cases where teams work on-site. This works really well in my experience, offering a little bit of time to get set-up for the day, a stand-up near the beginning to catch up and exchange status, then an uninterrupted rest-of-the-day.
To be honest, it sounds like in most cases I've heard of that teams are just undisciplined about interrupting developers. I obviously agree that interruptions are bad, but I've had great experiences (like my current team) when the standup serves to consolidate all interruptions – there will be no surprise customer demos, unexpected interrupts or other things of the sort, and part of the 'social contract' of the team is 'we will have this short meeting to keep us all up to date, and in exchange we will prevent developers from being interrupted'.
Stand-ups are only an interruption if they are poorly scheduled. I accept that sometimes it isn't possible to schedule one, such as when there is a large, geographically-distributed team. However, I have rarely seen them take place outside of the first 30 minutes to one hour of the working day, in cases where teams work on-site. This works really well in my experience, offering a little bit of time to get set-up for the day, a stand-up near the beginning to catch up and exchange status, then an uninterrupted rest-of-the-day.
To be honest, it sounds like in most cases I've heard of that teams are just undisciplined about interrupting developers. I obviously agree that interruptions are bad, but I've had great experiences (like my current team) when the standup serves to consolidate all interruptions – there will be no surprise customer demos, unexpected interrupts or other things of the sort, and part of the 'social contract' of the team is 'we will have this short meeting to keep us all up to date, and in exchange we will prevent developers from being interrupted'.
It works great.