Team Standups

What is a standup?

A standup is a daily 10-minute minute with relevant members of your team. It’s part of agile team methodology. and it’s called a standup because you literally stand up in a circle so that you don’t get too comfortable and talk too long. A standup works really well in the morning, a few minutes after everyone has unpacked and settled in for the day.

Why have a standup?

The purpose of the standup is to quickly touch base with your team so that, even in a really fast paced environment, you can connect the dots and ask for help so that your team can make as much progress as possible. It’s a great way to know what other people are up to and to surface problems that need to be addressed right away.

Who should join the standup?

On a very small team (<5), you probably want to have everyone join all of the time. The larger your team gets, the more specialized the work becomes. You should include the people who are working closely together on projects and tasks. It may end up that you have multiple stand-ups happening in the company, as you grow, with different teams. Feel free to adjust who attends as you grow.

Standup structure:

  • 9:20 - 9:30 AM, daily

  • Begins and ends promptly

  • Take turns having someone act as the timekeeper to keep your team on time

  • Stand in a circle in the main lobby

  • Go in a clockwise direction in which each person quickly shares:

    • Today I’m [red, yellow, green] - i.e., what is your emotional state?

    • Here’s what I did yesterday:

    • Here’s what I’m about to do today:

    • I have a request for help: [if you need help with something]

Virtual stand-ups:

  • You can absolutely do a standup on Zoom daily in the exact same way you were to do it in person

Hybrid stand-ups:

  • Have one person bring a phone or laptop to the meeting and have virtual members join in via phone or video conference

Asynchronous stand-ups:

  • Either post on Slack, send an email or video with the same information that you’d include in an in-person standup

  • This works well when teams are in very different time zones

Setting expectations:

  • Standups work best when they are brief and consistent

  • If someone is missing [stuck in traffic, has a doctor’s appointment] establish norms on what to do. One option is to ask anyone who is going to miss the standup to Slack or email bullet points with their responses at least 10 minutes before the actual standup so that the information is still shared in a timely manner with the team.