Here is what the Wikipedia article on Scrum has to say about the Daily Scrum:
The meeting starts precisely on time. Often there are team-decided punishments for tardiness (e.g. money, push-ups, hanging a rubber chicken around your neck).
Do you feel that it is a good practice and what self-punishment have you found effective in the past?
I dislike it in general. When your late to work you boss should punish you not your peers. This is just a really bad idea.
Of course, it is to prove a point in the beginning, but if you have to do it more than once, or think long and hard on the punishment, you have the wrong people on your team.
It's like a glimpse into the breakdown of a methodology.
Score 1, Rambo
Any work environment where 'punishment' of employees is a valid concept can take a hike.
Oddly, though, the monetary penalty is fine by me. Apparently, in my mind, that's not a punishment, it's a fine. I cost other people productivity, theoretically, so I'm okay with that costing me some money. The others are fundamentally humiliation-based, which is not wise.
When I've been the scrum master we always started on time regardless of whether everyone is there or not. If people don't make it they miss out - no chance to engage with the rest of the team on their progress and blockers. In my experience, it only takes one or two times for that to happen and the team self polices - people know we start on time, finish on time, and if you're not there you miss out - no punishment needed, it's all done by peer pressure.
BTW set your scrum time the same time every day, and allow for people's work patterns ie - 9:00AM doesn't work for everyone, but 10:00 should do, even better go for 9:50, run for 10 minutes and you don't crash anyone elses meetings.
I think it's bad practice. My current employer schedules our weekly catchup (No daily meetings sadly) at 9am on Monday morning and hits the roof when people are not on time. Rather then getting irate and verbally punishing people, it makes more sense to me to just schedule the meetings at a time where it's more likely that people won't be late. Such as 20-30mins after regular starting hours, so people have a chance to get in, compose themselves after commuting in, maybe grab a cup of coffee and maybe check their emails.
No one likes these "punishments", but the reality is that the meeting could be at 2pm and people would still be late. Every office I've worked in has had problems with people (and not always the same people) showing up 5 minutes after the meeting has already started. Sometimes it's because they hit Snooze for "5 minutes" at 5 minutes before the hour. Some people just aren't considerate enough to show up on time, and it doesn't matter how you punish them. Sometimes it's because their last meeting ran up until the very end of the hour. (I try to wrap my own meetings up 5 minutes before the hour, for my own benefit.)
But, having said all that, we put $.50 into a jar for each occurrence and at the end of the iteration someone would walk up to the bakery and buy a pie (typically $5-6) to celebrate the end of the iteration. So, it was punishment, but at the same time it got us some dessert too. ;)
The concept of "punishing" people is ridiculous in my book. If you have people that can't perform the tasks they are being paid to perform, I think you take them aside and find out what's holding them up. Is it the work environment, personal problems, or other? Most of the time there should be some changes that can be made or coaching given that can save somebody from becoming unemployed. If the situation can't be resolved, then terminate the person in a professional manner. But to publicly ridicule somebody, yell at them like children, or force them to pay money for their mistakes? That does nothing to build people up and will probably open you up to lawsuits.
[MrTelly's answer is the most sensible, but let me add to it a bit]
I haven't heard the word "tardy" since kindergarten!
Perhaps everyone who arrives on time should receive a gold star sticker, and anyone who is late doesn't get one. A poster board with everyone's gold stars can be displayed in the lobby so that visitors can easily see who the Good Little Children are.
Seriously, the notion of punishment in a professional environment is ludicrous. People who are late miss out on part of the meeting. If that causes their performance to drop or impacts the project, they get reprimanded for that, and eventually fired if the problem isn't corrected.
If you treat your developers like children, don't be surprised if they act like children. And vice-versa.
The point of these punishments is to make people realize that being at the meeting is important. While scheduling at a time people are likely to be able to make it makes sense, the truth is that some people will always be late if they are allowed to be. Either they have poor time management skills (not uncommon in developers) or they think the meetings are a waste of time and are rebelling in a not-so-subtle way. Either way they are hurting not just themselves but the rest of the team, and there needs to be some way of impressing that on them.
However most developers also resent punishments imposed from above. What I would suggest is having your team, not you (as scrum-master) decide an appropriate punishment. Then the reluctant attender is responsible to their peers, not under the thumb of authority. In my experience the 'punishments' that work best are those that are irritating enough to be avoided but not difficult or humiliating; maybe fetching a cup of coffee for each other member of the team; monitoring the daily builds for the next day; buying donuts.