Eh, I think you're thinking about this sentence as an engineer and not a writer. The author wants to draw you into the philosophy of software development, with its mix of processes and productivity hacks; the elaboration in that sentence serves to paint a more vivid picture of the tech work environment. Of course, we already know all this, but many readers from outside our field may find these descriptions illuminating.
As I writer, I feel the author is painting a picture that has been painted a thousand times before. In that particular paragraph, the additional material dominates the paragraph at the expense of the main point (which itself is strangely spread over a block of paragraphs).
As a reader I felt my time was wasted. Some explanation was in order, but I did not need to know the origin of the technique. "Work-process manual" is snooze-inducing.
Rewritten:
This spring, after staff at Washio had gathered for their daily "stand-up" meeting–in which employees are kept on their toes by giving status updates literally on their feet–operations manager San Nadler broke some bad news.
This draws the reader a bit into the meeting and explains what is meant by a "stand-up meeting" without bogging the reader down in details or the "philosophy of software development." If that philosophy was important for the author to communicate, it really deserves its own paragraph.
Except that it implies that stand-up meetings actually work to keep employees on their toes figuratively. In the first version, it's more of an implication that this is what the manual says and this company is just trying to build a business like you would a table.
In that case, I still agree with the parent. Either it's not important so don't mention it, or dedicate a paragraph taking standups to task for being agile cargo cult bullshit.
