Daily standup meetings have become a ritual for many teams, especially those using the Scrum methodology. Daily standups can help everyone stay on the same page and communicate more effectively—but these types of team meetings can quickly turn into a time drain if they aren’t run effectively. 

So, here are some standup meeting best practices so you can lead your team’s daily standups with confidence!

What is a Daily Standup Meeting?

A daily standup meeting, also known as a scrum meeting, is a daily get-together that helps teams sync up and prepare to have a productive day. This type of team meeting is typically capped at 15 minutes (although this may need adjusting depending on the size of the team). 

What are the Benefits of Daily Standups?

There are many benefits to daily standup meetings, which is why they’ve become so popular amongst modern teams! Daily standups can create higher performing teams by making it possible to: 

• Track each team member’s progress on their list of priorities 
• Identify obstacles to productivity 
• Clarify objectives and goals
• Ensure that everyone is working towards those same goals together
• Stay focused on a shorter window of time, preventing employees from feeling overwhelmed 
• Encourage team communication
• Foster collaboration  
• Empower team members to feel comfortable bringing up issues and asking each other for support

Example of a Daily Standup Agenda

The great thing about daily standup agendas is that they’re short and dialed-in. In fact, only three core topics should be discussed at your daily standup meetings. Your daily standup agenda should include asking participants to go around and answer the following questions:

1. What did I do yesterday? Have each team member share their progress on what they worked on the day before, focusing on the activities that are relevant to the overall goals and initiatives of the team.
   
   
2. What am I doing today? Next, each team member should cover all the things they plan to accomplish that day—knowing they’ll be held accountable to give a progress report on those tasks in tomorrow’s daily standup meeting.
   
   
3. Are there any obstacles impeding my progress? Each team member should voice if they have any concerns about their task list for the day. This includes any cross-departmental dependencies, technical limitations, and lack of resources. 

Yup, that’s it! Any items that will take longer than a few minutes to discuss should be addressed after the daily standup meeting or during your leadership meeting.

How Can You Run More Effective Daily Standups? 

There are clearly many benefits of daily standups—but there can also be some pitfalls, too. 

In our digitally-driven, hyper-connected world, the way we work has changed. More and more companies offer remote work policies, which means employees are often working on the go.

With this working model, daily standups can easily become a waste of time. When everyone has to stop what they're doing and meet live, it can quickly become distracting. It’s even more challenging to get everyone together for a live daily standup if team members are off-site in client meetings, living in different time zones, getting work done on a flight, etc. Plus, if someone is off for the day or out sick, they won’t get a chance to hear what was talked about in the daily standup meeting.

So, how is it possible to lead daily standups that are actually effective—rather than distracting—in our modern working world? By going digital! A digital platform can help the whole team meet and also track important things like goal progress and tasks that come out of meetings. 

5 Tips for Virtual Standup Meetings

After a decade-plus of running in-person, virtual, and distributed teams, we’ve gotten all meetings dialed in. Check out some tips for how to meet in a way that energizes and focuses, rather than distracts, your team.

1. Keep your async communication flowing

Just because you have your daily standup, don’t stop communicating! In fact, when you use asynchronous communication correctly, your standups will be even faster and smoother. Communicate throughout the day on progress, blockers being resolved, and issues you see coming up tomorrow. When you foresee an issue that will take more time than appropriate in a standup, add it to your weekly meeting agenda to get your team on the same page.

2. Have an agenda

Like any meeting, your standups need to have an agenda. Though it may seem unnecessary since you’re only checking on three simple things (yesterday, today, and blockers), an agenda will ensure that you stay on track and not get lost chit-chatting about someone’s dog for too long. An agenda also means that everyone comes in ready to discuss what they need to and then move on with their day.

3. Set a consistent time

A daily standup will ideally be closer to the beginning of most people’s workdays, but in the end, the only thing that matters is it’s consistent. This way your team can account for a standing, don’t-miss meeting and plan their schedules around it. Of course, you never know ahead of time when an emergency comes up and prevents you from making it to work, which brings us to our next point…

4. Document what happened

Ideally, your agenda will have a space for each person to enter their prior day’s work, today’s work, and any blockers. This way people (and especially leaders) can go into the meeting anticipating any bumps in the road. It also helps for anyone who misses the meeting to catch up when they get back. 

5. Document what happens next

Most meetings have some takeaways — otherwise, they could have been an email! Create tasks, jot down ideas, and update goals during the meeting. Make sure you have a document trail giving people visibility into what’s happening next, whether it’s shifting priorities or redefining a project’s scope.

From there, your team should be able to tackle their day! 

Have Better Standups in Teams

Daily standup meetings are designed to be short, focused, and engaging — resulting in more seamless team cohesion and project management. If you're collaborating with your team in Microsoft Teams, shouldn't standups live there, too? Strety is the team meeting platform that can make this possible.

With Strety, you can collaborate on agendas, make note of decisions, and add context to goals — all within Microsoft Teams. You can use Strety as an app in Teams or in a browser with Microsoft SSO, and sync your goals and tasks with Microsoft Planner, Microsoft To Do, and leading PSAs.

Try Strety for free or contact us to book a tour or to ask any questions you may have about our performance management product for modern teams!