Daily Standups: 101
For the last ten years, every single one of my working days has started the same way: with a daily standup. I love them. They are a fun and social start to the day, and a fantastic tool for keeping teams collaborating effectively and driving towards the same goals. Here’s how to do them.
The Purpose
The purpose of a daily standup is to create visibility and alignment among the team, to ensure we help each other to meet our immediate goals. It is not a status update meeting, although that is a partial side-effect of it. It is a quick huddle for the team, to start the day with some friendly human interaction, and to help us move forward together.
Yesterday, Today, Blockers
Running a standup is simple. Gather together, pick a facilitator, and get them to ask each member of the team, one at a time:
- What did you do yesterday?
- What do you plan to do today?
- Is anything blocking you from achieving what you plan to do today?
I summarise this as (and frequently just point at people and say): “yesterday, today, blockers?”
We want to hear what you did yesterday, so we know where progress is being made (and therefore also where progress is not being made). We want to hear what you are planning to tackle or focus on today, so that we don’t duplicate efforts, or miss opportunities to collaborate. It also gives us a chance to commit to what we want to achieve today in front of the team, which can allow us better focus. I said I’d do it in front of the team, so I’d better do it!
The “blockers” part is really important. If you know that something is going to stop you from being able to tackle or complete what you need to today, the standup is the place to surface that and ask for help or guidance.
If the team doesn’t love the phrase “blockers”, then you can rephrase the third question as: “Do you need any help from anyone to get that done today?”
Three Rules
1. Don’t skip it
Do it every day. Get in the habit. There is no reason to skip it. If it takes three minutes and no further discussions are needed, great! At least the team knows where they are all at.
2. Always do it at the same time every day
We don’t wait for people. This isn’t a meeting that we wait until everyone is present for. Get into the habit of gathering and people can jog in late or catch up later if they miss the start. The standup cares not if you are late.
3. Maximum of 15 minutes
The standup should be no longer than 15 minutes. Under 10 minutes is even better. If it takes longer, check out some of the tips below, and make sure people are just focusing on the key questions: “yesterday, today, blockers”.
Five Tips
Schedule it
Put a recurring meeting in everyone’s calendar. Turn the alerts on for it. Make sure it happens.
Don’t solve it at standup
The question “is anything blocking you” often reveals some complex and gnarly issue that doesn’t yet have a solution. The objective of the standup is to flush these sorts of issues out, rather than to solve them then and there.
If a detailed discussion starts, I will interrupt it and politely ask that the folks involved to catch up immediately after the standup to discuss it. That way we avoid the standup becoming a general “solve all the things” meeting, and running longer than 15 minutes. This is a tip, not a rule, sometimes a quick chat at standup can resolve the issue and unblock the team, and that’s perfect!
Do it standing up
It’s called a standup. If you are all standing up, the standup is guaranteed to be shorter. As soon as one person sits down, it turns into a thirty minute meeting. If I sit down, I expect you to call me on it!
Do it in front of a “board”
I have found that standups are much more effective when done in front of some kind of “board”. A key purpose of the standup is to maintain alignment. This is more easily done when everyone is looking at the same shared map of the current situation.
The board should have the “chunks” of work that people are focusing on, be that tasks, projects, customers, reports, documents or whatever you are tackling that day. It should show what is done this week, what is currently being worked on, and what is not. The stuff that is not currently being worked on should be in a priority order, so we know what is most important to tackle next.
The board could be in JIRA, or Trello, or a spreadsheet, or physical cards on the wall. The format isn’t important. The important thing is that everyone is looking at the same stuff, and we can have sensible and unambiguous conversations about the work we are doing, with less chance of mis-communication or crossed-wires.
If you are remote, and using Zoom or Teams or whatever, share your screen so everyone can see the board.
Keep it light
One lovely side-effect of starting the day with a standup is that we get to kick off the day connecting as people. We can laugh about the day yesterday, crack jokes about the current news or get our annoying commute or housemate off our chest. Let people be themselves.
Although you want to keep the standup short and punchy, I don’t believe you want to do that at the expense of having space to be natural and friendly together. This is triply true when you have remote teammates, as this may be the only time that day they get to interact with the whole team in a casual environment. Keep it light, start the day with a smile.
Weekly Goals
Something that goes extremely well with daily standups is having weekly (or sprint) goals. Weekly goals are a short, ordered list of the key outcomes you are trying to drive as a team. Essentially, at the start of the week (or sprint) you contract, as a team, to complete these specific goals. You then organise and prioritise your activities around ensuring you hit those goals.
At the daily standup, remind each other of the goals, or make them visible, and ask each other if there is anything currently blocking us from making progress towards those goals. If there is, we look for ways to help each other and collaborate to unblock progress.
Get Up! Standup!
A regular fixture of agile product teams, tons of teams in all kinds of industries and disciplines now use the standup as a way to ensure they are aligned and collaborating in their day-to-day hustle. If your team doesn’t use them yet, I really recommend you give them a shot!
