>If a clear majority of the audience isn't interested in your status then you're just burning hours.

From my understanding stand ups are not supposed to be status reports. They tend to turn into them though as it seems the most common format is 1) what did you work on yesterday, 2) what are you working on today, 3) what's blocking you?

I prefer daily stand ups (near the onset of the day) for small teams to be 1) what's our goal for today? 2) what might block us or slow us down? 3) how are we going to tackle our goal?

When stand ups start feeling like justifying your existence then morale drops, [looking] busy work increases, and too much time is spent on CYA. Focus on solving problems not explaining them.