Standups

Standups

Standups are part of the agile methodology. Agile is a project management tool, and standups are a way of outlining what you intend to work on over the next 24 hours. Their purpose is to:

  • Keep the team in sync
  • Identify blockers
  • Deal with issues arising (e.g. need to reprioritize in the face of an arising issue or change in estimate)

Traditionally, standups are done verbally "in person" or live in a team meeting e.g. on video. However, in distributed asynchronous teams it can be common to do these asynchronously via e.g. shared team chat.

Format

  • Recap (What did you accomplish during the last 24 hours?)
  • Plan (What is your plan for the next 24 hours?)
  • Blockers (Is there something getting in the way of you completing your tasks)
  • [Optional] Availability (What is your availability for the next 24 hours?) [This is optional and only used to flag if someone will not be available at their usual times]

Linger topics

To keep the standup focused, if substantive items arise (e.g. discussion around a blocker) add them to a dedicated "linger" topic section. These topics are:

  • Either dealt with when the formal standup ends during a "linger" time with the relevant parties staying in the meeting (hence the term "linger topic")
  • Or: dealt with in separate follow-up meetings e.g. "OK, there's a big question around X, let's schedule a meeting for tomorrow to go over it"

NB: it can be worth scheduling in a dedicated "linger" time in a standup meeting. e.g. if the standup is normally 15m then you add a 15m "linger" segment. If there is no linger material people can just get the time back and use it for something else.

Template for posting in chat

Here's a template to use for posting

- Last 24h: ...
- Next 24h: ...
- Blockers: ...
- Availability: ...

Recommend standup of last 24h and next 24h are on chat next 24h should have specifics of what will get completed (rather than "working on X" say "working on X and will complete this subtask") Using the kanban boards in the live standup to quickly highlight major items (what has got done, what is worked on next)

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