Daily standups

What are they? #

A short and focused meeting for the team to check in on progress. They shouldn’t last any longer than 15 minutes. Standups help team members keep up-to-date with what others are doing. They are also an opportunity to flag when blockers are in the way, so that Delivery Leads (and others) try and remove them. Aside from what is actually being discussed, standups are also a good opportunity to gauge the mood in the team.

Who should join? #

Everyone on the delivery team should join standups. This includes service owner, product manager, developers, delivery leads, user researchers and other specialists who may be with you for a short time.

What does a good standup cover? #

A typical standup involves each team member answering the same three questions:

• What did you do yesterday?
• What are you doing today?
• What blockers do you have?

Sometimes teams like to take a different approach. This could include walking the wall, where you run through the tickets on your task board (e.g. Trello). For dxw support standups you may run through Open support tickets, check the status of Pending tickets and monitor SLAs.

Getting the most out of standups #

• Start and finish on time. Don’t be late and don’t let the meeting drag on.
• Follow up with each other if needed. Make time to have more in depth conversations if you need them.
• Keep things tidy. Make sure the task board is updated afterwards.
• Listen to each other. Can you help resolve a blocker? Does someone’s work impact yours? Can you help make it better?
• Follow up on blockers. How serious is it? Who’s going to help resolve it?
• Change it up! If it gets stagnant, do something different, ask different questions.

Other tips #

• Have a standard set-up that people know how to use, and set time aside for it
• Use the same space and dial in details. Make sure the links are in the calendar invite.
• Know how you’re going to facilitate it. This could be the delivery person, or it could be a shared responsibility.
• Be ready to stop people talking for too long. You can try timeboxing people’s updates if this is a recurring issue.
• Don’t forget to follow up on actions and blockers.
• For tickets that are taking a long time to get done, try breaking them down into smaller items.

Last updated: 9 May 2023 (history)