Can the daily scrum be a waste of time?

Sometimes a team come to the conclusion that the daily scrum (a.k.a. the daily stand-up) is a waste of time. I think the most common reason for this is that the team is not having an effective informative meeting. I've seen a lot of daily scrums turn in to a status report where everybody tries to justify what they've done in the last day and especially bring up all the good things they've done. But that's not what the daily scrum is for. It is to bring up problems and let everybody know what will happen in the next 24 hours. or at least that's what I think is the most important part. You should view the daily scrum as your daily planning meeting.

The other type of team that wants to skip the daily scrum is typically a team sitting together in one room and performing very well with a lot of communication. If the team is doing and communicating well, why waste a few minutes every day in a daily scrum that will not bring up anything not already communicated? Well, as I mentioned before; different teams (and times) call for different measures. I think it is OK for a team that has embraced agile software development so well to stop having daily scrums if the communication is good without it. And with such a mature team it will notice when the daily scrums are needed again.

But be warned; most teams who want to skip the daily scrum wants to do it for the wrong reason. And even if the team has excellent communication and sitting all together, the cost of everybody stand up (no need to even leave the desk) and confirm that there are no big issues that needs to be raised is better than trying to skip them. The potential benefits by far outweighs the cost in my mind. So I would do the safe thing; keep it and just make it really, really short most of the time.