meeting-daily-standup

Cap the standup at 15 minutes with each person answering three questions: what they completed yesterday, what they will do today, and what is blocking them. Keep updates to 60-90 seconds per person and park any topic needing more than 30 seconds of discussion for after the meeting.

Use an async standup via Slack or a bot like Geekbot that posts the three questions at each person's local morning and collects answers in a shared channel. Async standup should still be paired with a weekly or bi-weekly live sync to maintain team connection.

Round-robin goes person by person and suits small teams under eight people. Walk-the-board reviews tickets on a Jira or Kanban board instead, keeping focus on the work rather than individuals, and is preferred for engineering teams running sprints.

Standups run long when problem-solving happens during the meeting or updates lack time limits. Use a visible timer, start on time without waiting for latecomers, and enforce a parking lot where any topic needing extended discussion is handled after standup with only relevant people.

Common anti-patterns include solving problems during the meeting, treating it as a report to the manager, skipping the blockers question, and managers adding commentary after every update. Fixes include strict offline rules, peer-to-peer framing, and requiring all three questions even when the answer is no blockers.

Change the format when people give identical updates daily, no blockers are ever raised, attendees disengage, or the meeting consistently exceeds 20 minutes. Options include switching to walk-the-board, moving to async-first with optional live check-ins, or splitting into sub-team standups.