So my new gig has moved to doing daily agile standup meetings and while I've done these before, I don't think I've ever seen them done quite so consistently well. And the credit for this goes to my boss, Dave Sifry, who is our lead facilitator. We are a team of 8 people and, so far, we have brought them in at under the scheduled 15 minutes per meeting every time.

Here are the techniques that we are using:

1. Start on time. If everyone isn't there, well, the meeting happens anyway. Ideally, if the team lead isn't on time, the meeting happens anyway.
2. Scheduled for 5 minutes after the hour. This allows people in other meetings to make it.
3. A consistent Url. This is the one down side to Zoom - the meeting can't start if the leader isn't present. If we used Google Meet then that wouldn't be an issue.
4. A simple format. A ridiculously simple, fast format:

• Here's what I'm up to today
• Here's what I'm stuck on.
• How can I help anyone else?

While I'm generally not a fan of meetings, agile stand ups, done this way, tend to bring developers into line. Even if a developer isn't good with email - or good with text messages - normally they can handle "show up at time X for 15 minutes every day".

In closing, while I'm not a huge proponent of heavy weight agile processes (think scrum / agile velocity), I am really enjoying daily stand ups again. Recommended.