It’s my observation from watching small groups of people working together that it’s almost universally common that some people will take charge and direct the common effort and others will get quiet, abdicating any such role.

It’s also my observation that, even in a small team working together daily, people notice different things, interpret the things they notice differently, and assign different significance to those interpretations. People often think that because they are immersed in a common experience that there’s no need to talk about it. This appears to not be so.

Groups of technically oriented people often want to optimize the work process to those activities needed for the technically oriented output, and overlook those that are focused on the needs of humans and groups of humans working together. Yes, you can have a standup and not get any value from it. You can also not have a standup and avoid providing a convenient mechanism for taking advantage of the differences in observation, interpretation, and significance made by the entire team.

If you’ve got a really good team facilitator, they’ll likely notice this and help bring it out. If they’re really excellent, they’ll convince the team to work in a fashion where it can more easily come out without them acting as a middleman to make it happen. They might use a simple technique such as a daily standup to create such an opportunity.