Poor Man’s Standups In Slack

kurt braget
Aug 9, 2017 · 3 min read

If you’re like me, you’re sometimes too stupid or stingy to understand that spending a few bucks on software saves a ton of time and money. You actually love trying to cheat life’s random costs. You think of it is a sort of “hacking”.

I recently used this philosophy towards how I create my standups in Slack. If you’re not aware of what standups are, here’s a link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-up_meeting

Of course, you could use a sweet service like geekbot.io (i don’t work for them) to manage your automated Slack standups. No, that would be too simple, and that might cost you actually money.

I hope your inner Scrooge McDuck is getting excited, cuz I’m about to show you how to get more value from your team without spending an extra dollar.

The Problem

I work with a lot of guys in different time zones. Not just time zones but people who are on different schedules in the same time zone. We are living in a world that is becoming more asynchronous by the moment.

For example, my homie Zachary (that’s not his real name) loves to start work at 730am — 8am. My other homie Drew (that’s his real name) likes to work around 1030AM after coffee. I like to start my standup around 11am before having something to eat.

I believe that standups should be done asynchronously and not on a rigid time schedule.

So the questions is, how do you create a great automated standup in slack, without having to use a pay for service? Here’s how.

The Solution

The key is to use the reminders system. For example, I just set up Drew’s standup. Here it is:

Here is the actual command I entered in Slack.

/remind #standups to “do @drew's standup - 1 yesterday's accomplishments 2 today's goals 3 challenges?” at 10:30AM every weekday.

Just enter it in the input box at the bottom of the slack channel:

The trick is to create a custom one for each person on the team, so they can do their standups at their own leisure. The scrum master could also review the standups asynchronously. A happy asynchronous world.

Yeah, I know, some people already know how to do this, but I didn’t before. If you already know, you’re really smart and I’m very proud of you, son. You’re super good looking.

For those who don’t know, let me know if it was helpful for you or not. I’m always wondering if spending the 10 minutes for a blog post is relevant or a total waste of my time. I’m also willing to talk to random strangers because I’m not famous or rich, yet.

Here is more info on Slack’s slash command /remind. https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/208423427-Set-a-reminder

You can do a lot of cool tricks with Slack’s slash commands, I think it’s one of Slack’s most underused, underrated features.

Live long and prosper.


I run one of LA’s greatest MVP building shops, if you’d like to work with us, drop me an email at kurt@popstand.com.

Popstand Inc

kurt braget

Written by

@kurtybot

Popstand Inc

Building apps and sites for startups

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