I think motivating factor is the least helpful thing stand ups provide so your assertions are slightly correct if that was the goal of stand ups.<p>Stand ups actually provide:<p>1.) Better communication of what everyone is working on.<p>2.) This leads to faster cross training as people are able to ask questions.<p>3.) Making others on the team aware of issues you are working on so they don&#x27;t make bad assumptions that you&#x27;re not doing anything etc.<p>4.) Social engineering shouldn&#x27;t work here much as far as being lazy.  Good team leads and coworkers will ask to help out should they see someone dragging there feet.  Your coworker should be doing code reviews or know about how long it takes to setup a server.  It should be pretty obvious if you manipulating, at least I&#x27;ve found it is.<p>5.) In the past 2 months we have let two people go because standups revealed they weren&#x27;t really doing anything.  Stand ups gave us a chance daily to ask what have you done?  It gave the chance for a coworker to step in and help out.  It identified this person just didn&#x27;t want to work and we replaced him with someone who did.<p>&gt;&gt;&gt; If a manager doesn&#x27;t know what his team is up to before the meeting, he&#x27;s not doing a good job. Perhaps because he doesn&#x27;t already command the respect of the team?<p>I disagree.  A good manager should have a broad overview of what&#x27;s going on but, he should be busy in his own job planning etc. to not have to micromanage.  A 15 minute stand up each day gives him insight he needs without standing over anyone&#x27;s shoulder or worse making false assumptions about what they might not be doing.