I didn't mean to suggest firing them if they don't ask questions per se. But lets imagine there is no daily scrum for whatever reason, people are working on their own things, if they don't ask for help and get stuck for 5 days in something without saying a word, I would have a chat with the person asap. If this continued, then yes, probably fire them as they aren't working.

And with the octagon example, there should be some kind of ticket for Bezier Curves and Octogons, if they cancel each other out, who in the hell created those tickets/decided on them? And again, you don't need a daily stand up to have an idea of who is working on what. The ticket board/tracker should give you a good idea if someone is doing Bezier Curves and you pick Octogons.

> 15-30 minutes of lost focus for everyone everyday is really not that big a cost to pay to ensure this happens early.

The problem it isn't 15-30 minutes. It is much more, because unless you are managing with strict work hours, and can make sure the stand up isn't delayed or interrupts someone's work, you are losing a lot more of the developers time. Context and focus is lost if you were in the middle of a task. Time is lost getting back to the place where you were, etc.

It may help with 'bad teams', but if the punishment for good teams is to do that because of the others, then I am sorry, I'm out. Makes no sense.

If it works for you and your team, more power to you. But not for me. (And I would really advise folks to try and understand if the team actually feels stand ups (or any other thing really) are a positive for the people involved, or they are just to 'scared' to raise concerns to not be that guy, as I have seen this happen a lot, going with the flow, but the moment they can speak freely, raise all concerns)