Extended Stand-ups
It's an interesting thing watching how different teams adapt agile methods to improve what they do. One team I've been involved in recently runs on a 4 week iteration and each Monday performs what amounts to an extended stand up.
At the usual stand up time the scrum master does a quick recap of the previous weeks activities and a reminds people of what's left in the iteration. For teams running longer iteration cycles this is really useful in that it prevents team members answering the 3 questions like this:
Yesterday (Friday): "It was a big weekend and I can't remember what I did. I'm sure I did something but I'm not sure."
Today: "Um, Once I remember what I was doing I'll get into it. Looks like I was doing Task D, but, um, yeah.... I'll do that"
Impediments: "Alcohol, lack of sleep, memory problems"
By recapping the previous weeks activities the team has a chance to get their brain cells moving again after the weekend and have time to reestablish some context for what they were doing the week before. In reminding people of what's coming up for the week people have time to think about the tasks they have put their name against and can double check that what they were planning on doing today is actually relevant.
Once the iteration recap/refresh is complete the team moves straight into the normal stand up. The extended standup may take another 5 or 10 minutes to complete but that extra time is well spent if it helps the team get the week started on the right foot.