Play of the month: Stand-ups aren't just for software teams... does your team do them?

Kristen Roth
Community Manager
Community Managers are Atlassian Team members who specifically run and moderate Atlassian communities. Feel free to say hello!
November 12, 2020

Software teams have been doing Stand-ups for over a decade, but all teams can benefit from these short, regular check in meetings. At Atlassian, each team has a personalized version that keeps everyone involved and engaged. Whether they’re on Zoom, Slack, daily, or weekly, no two are exactly alike.

Are Stand-ups something you do with your team on a regular basis? If so, tell us about your team's personalized version! If not, what's keeping you from doing these quick team huddles? Let's discuss! 

standups_hero new@2x.png

 

29 comments

Comment

Log in or Sign up to comment
Becky Rubenstein
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
November 12, 2020

Our team works across 3 timezones and some team members have non-traditional work hours so every Monday we do a Stand-up on Slack, using an automated reminder. It's been really nice having that record to go back to when I forget what someone is working on.

Like # people like this
Kristen Roth
Community Manager
Community Managers are Atlassian Team members who specifically run and moderate Atlassian communities. Feel free to say hello!
November 13, 2020

Thanks for sharing, @Becky Rubenstein! Having weekly updates written out for everyone to reference as needed does sound handy.

Danno
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
November 13, 2020

I have not tried Slack yet. We currently are using Teams site wide. Is Slack better for communicating within the Atlassian environment?

Kristen Roth
Community Manager
Community Managers are Atlassian Team members who specifically run and moderate Atlassian communities. Feel free to say hello!
November 13, 2020

Hi, @Danno! We use Slack internally and do enjoy the integrations between Slack and our Atlassian tools.

Like Becky Rubenstein likes this
Danno
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
May 30, 2021

@Kristen RothI did stumble onto an add-on for Teams that allows for people to participate in the standup if they can't be there for the live version. Agile Polly.

Brant Schroeder
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
November 16, 2020

We often establish this at the beginning of the project and identify specific times we can make this happen and how we will make it happen.  We have used Teams, Zoom and Slack.  Just depends on the team and how they like to work.

Like # people like this
Kristen Roth
Community Manager
Community Managers are Atlassian Team members who specifically run and moderate Atlassian communities. Feel free to say hello!
November 16, 2020

Awesome, @Brant Schroeder. Sounds like you're making sure to accommodate all team members involved. That's definitely key! 

Sajit Nair
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
November 17, 2020

yes. They are the hearbeat for our teams.

Like # people like this
Kristen Roth
Community Manager
Community Managers are Atlassian Team members who specifically run and moderate Atlassian communities. Feel free to say hello!
November 18, 2020

Nice, @Sajit Nair! Are they fully remote right now or are some back in the office?

Soumyadeep Mandal
Rising Star
Rising Star
Rising Stars are recognized for providing high-quality answers to other users. Rising Stars receive a certificate of achievement and are on the path to becoming Community Leaders.
November 21, 2020

Definitely! Stand-ups should be done on a regular basis because it helps a team to track and manage a goal!

Like Kristen Roth likes this
Kristen Roth
Community Manager
Community Managers are Atlassian Team members who specifically run and moderate Atlassian communities. Feel free to say hello!
November 23, 2020

Totally agree, @Soumyadeep Mandal!

Like Soumyadeep Mandal likes this
Walter Buggenhout
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
November 21, 2020

Our consultancy has a daily standup, which is entirely remote over zoom. As most of us are working on their own projects, we focus mostly on keeping everyone in the loop on what everyone is at. That is mostly an informative part. The key part is the I'm stuck and I could use some help here bit, which is key to pull in available expertise from others on the team.

During covid we saw that it's more difficult sometimes to get everyone to dial in remotely. If anyone recognises this and has developed practices to overcome the risk of people being left out of the team by this, I'd love to hear them!

Like # people like this
Kristen Roth
Community Manager
Community Managers are Atlassian Team members who specifically run and moderate Atlassian communities. Feel free to say hello!
November 23, 2020

It can be a little tough remotely, that's for sure! On my team, we ended up naturally developing a solution that works well for us. If more than a couple of people aren't able to join the call remotely over Zoom, we move to a digital format and each of us adds the following into our Slack channel (we do our Stand-ups weekly on Mondays):

  • Monday mood: (Pick an emoji that fits!)
  • Shipped/work moved forward last week:
  • Priorities this week:
  • Challenges/Blockers:

Think something like that could work for your team, @Walter Buggenhout ?

Like # people like this
Walter Buggenhout
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
November 25, 2020

Definitely @Kristen Roth ,

I like the focus on different aspects of team health while you keep it pretty limited as well. I think I am going to suggest something we try something along these lines.

I am a strong believer that remote teams should commit more to asynchronous communication. Not to replace the physical touch base, but to make sure everyone in the team is accounted for and can stay informed - even if they get stuck in a discussion with their teenager or need to clean up the mess after their ill-gone cat.

Did you have an immediate agreement with the team on what was a good frequency - I see you chose a weekly standup? Or did you go through a couple of iterations before you landed on that?

And do you have a separate channel for this? Or does it get cluttered away pretty soon by dozens of other posts in the team channel too?

Like Kristen Roth likes this
Kristen Roth
Community Manager
Community Managers are Atlassian Team members who specifically run and moderate Atlassian communities. Feel free to say hello!
November 30, 2020

@Walter Buggenhout we immediately started with a weekly stand up. We have two other full team meetings each week so a daily standup would probably be a biiiiiit too much for us. 

We do not have a separate channel for our stand ups but that seems like a good idea! Especially if they're done on a daily basis.

Like # people like this
Walter Buggenhout
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
December 20, 2020

Just as a heads up on this - we started with weekly standups now 2 weeks ago. I took the liberty to borrow the same format you presented in the thread above. And I chose to do this in a dedicated Slack channel indeed.

Although we also have a daily standup, this approach has immediately given us a better insight into the somewhat larger objectives of our team. And jotting the challenges/blockers down in writing has also enabled us to reach out spontaneously to assist team members in need of support.

The challenges that get listed for the week are usually a bit bigger or more structural than those mentioned during a daily standup, so it's great to gain more visibility in those.

And - the dedicated channel is definitely something I'd recommend for various reasons. It's easy to review last week's priorities of the team as they are all in one place. And the information doesn't get overwhelmed by all the other daily activities from our regular team channel.

Like # people like this
Becky Rubenstein
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
December 21, 2020

wow! sounds like you're getting a lot out of this new ritual. It's interesting how these different formats for communicating help us in different ways. Thanks so much for sharing.

Kristen Roth
Community Manager
Community Managers are Atlassian Team members who specifically run and moderate Atlassian communities. Feel free to say hello!
December 28, 2020

That's fantastic, @Walter Buggenhout! So glad to hear this new approach is working well for your team. And regarding the dedicated Slack channel, noted! It's a great recommendation and something I'll keep in mind and mention to my team if it seems like our weekly standups are starting to get lost in the rest of the channel's chatter.

Dave Liao
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
December 1, 2020

Our team (while not a software team, we're IT workers) has a daily meetup. It's not strictly timeboxed to 15 minutes (or a time that would encourage brevity) but since we're all remote employees now, having time to connect personally with each other is appreciated (and probably needed).

Like Kristen Roth likes this
Kristen Roth
Community Manager
Community Managers are Atlassian Team members who specifically run and moderate Atlassian communities. Feel free to say hello!
December 2, 2020

For sure, @Dave Liao! Those personal connections are even more important these days. 

Like Dave Liao likes this
Deepanshu Natani
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
December 3, 2020

We do Stand-ups daily since they help us connect with the whole team (in addition to know the status).

Like Kristen Roth likes this
Kristen Roth
Community Manager
Community Managers are Atlassian Team members who specifically run and moderate Atlassian communities. Feel free to say hello!
December 3, 2020

That's great, @Deepanshu Natani! Are they in-person/video stand ups or are they written/chat style? Or maybe a mix of both!

Deepanshu Natani
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
December 3, 2020

My team works 100% remote. So all our meetings including stand ups are video meetings.

Like Kristen Roth likes this
Jack Brickey
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
December 15, 2020

TBH, I haven't been part of Stand-ups for some time now and I miss them. I think this 'everyone working remote' has thrown many of us askew. 2021 Resolution anyone?? 

Like # people like this
Kristen Roth
Community Manager
Community Managers are Atlassian Team members who specifically run and moderate Atlassian communities. Feel free to say hello!
December 15, 2020

I'd miss them, too! It definitely has, @Jack Brickey. Trying to bring them back with your team  in 2021 sounds like a great idea. Let us know how it goes!  

Dave Liao
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
December 15, 2020

@Jack Brickey - Having a daily checkpoint is even more needed in these remote work times.

Of course, your team's mileage may vary. 😄

Like # people like this
Alexander SRed March 24, 2021

Hi everybody,

In my current project we do stand-ups every day about 15min, although we are in the office part-time, we connect remote to our stand-up. 

I'm really looking forward to the time, when we can make it personally again, because via Tools like Webex, Teams, etc. the team is in the meeting and in kinda way they aren't. If you know what I mean? 

We are working in a big portfolio group on one application and so we try to hold us in loop, on which task everyone is working, how is it going, etc. And I try to make them feel already in a team, although they are part-time at home office and haven't seen each other for a while. 

Like # people like this
Gonchik Tsymzhitov
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
May 4, 2021

@Alexander SRed  I know what you mean. 

Also, motivation of team members go down, and we loose sometimes a visibility of blocker situations. 

I see, another personal opportunity of remote start-ups is async way, you just write to bot and you can compare after filling data. 

Like Kristen Roth likes this
Dave
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
May 4, 2021

When we were all in the office our daily stand-ups were very much "all business" and very focused on the current state of play and the things everyone was looking to achieve that day (with the risks, blockers called out, etc). However since lockdown has started and our stand-ups are done over Zoom I've tried to make them much more informal and social. 

Some of my team have never met in person and don't get as much opportunity for social interaction so I've found that stand-ups are are a great way for team bonding. We still get the business at hand done but it's an opportunity to learn a little more about each other and have a few laughs and the feedback from the team on this has been very positive!

Like # people like this
Gonchik Tsymzhitov
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
May 5, 2021

@Dave it sounds interesting. could you share detail of your informal and social stand-ups, please?

Like Dave likes this
Dave
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
May 5, 2021

No worries @Gonchik Tsymzhitov ...

My team meets on Zoom every day at 11am. I usually get a general line of conversation going as everyone joins then after a few minutes once everyone has joined I'll kick off the updates usually starting with person that joined first, they then nominate the next person. Once all updates are given I might use having everyone together to make any quick announcements and will then start another line of conversation (but make clear that anyone can drop out if they have anything else they want to focus on).

The things we talk about are varied (Mondays and Friday are easy - what did you get up to / what do you have planned this weekend?) but I'll also bring up anything funny from the news or things I've seen online. The key thing is to try and involve others (I'm never just doing a monologue) but as team lead I'll make sure there are no awkward silences and try to get everyone involved. But conversation is usually quite light hearted and topical - rarely work related.

As I say, I wouldn't take this approach in an office but it is working well and definitely helping build a remote team.

Like # people like this
Gonchik Tsymzhitov
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
May 10, 2021

@Dave Thank you for explanation and clarification of your meeting process :)  

Like Dave likes this
Charlie Misonne
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
May 6, 2021

Once a week to discuss the planning because we do not work on the same projects.

For teams worknig closely together daily standups are a must. But they shouldn't take longer than 15min. I've been in standups taking ages with 1-1 discussions.

15-minute-daily-standup-is-a-1-hour-status-meeting.jpg

Like # people like this
Kristen Roth
Community Manager
Community Managers are Atlassian Team members who specifically run and moderate Atlassian communities. Feel free to say hello!
May 6, 2021

Totally agree on the timing for daily standups, @Charlie Misonne !

Gonchik Tsymzhitov
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
May 10, 2021

@Charlie Misonne  Nice meme :) Thank you! 

Like Kristen Roth likes this
Stanislav
Rising Star
Rising Star
Rising Stars are recognized for providing high-quality answers to other users. Rising Stars receive a certificate of achievement and are on the path to becoming Community Leaders.
May 11, 2021

We doing stand up in the start of the project, and every sprint.
Read a lot here!
Nice!

Like Kristen Roth likes this
Matteo Gubellini _SoftComply_
Rising Star
Rising Star
Rising Stars are recognized for providing high-quality answers to other users. Rising Stars receive a certificate of achievement and are on the path to becoming Community Leaders.
May 13, 2021

Yep, quite good on Mondays to regroup and plan for the week ahead.

Like Kristen Roth likes this
Çiğdem Büyükaşik
Marketplace Partner
Marketplace Partners provide apps and integrations available on the Atlassian Marketplace that extend the power of Atlassian products.
May 13, 2021

We do have the daily Stand-ups and make sure to keep everyone in the loop about where we're heading as a whole and individually. We have it with 15 people remotely and takes around 30 minutes max. We spot the issues, the bottlenecks, and the support needed. Right after the stand-up, we focus on the bottlenecks in smaller groups and try to start the day with a positive and constructive flow. This leads to better agility and is a great way of keeping the team updated about who is working on what.  

Kristen Roth
Community Manager
Community Managers are Atlassian Team members who specifically run and moderate Atlassian communities. Feel free to say hello!
May 20, 2021

Sounds like a great system, @Çiğdem Büyükaşik !

M Amine
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
May 30, 2021

Yes two. One the morning and one at the end of the day. 

Like Kristen Roth likes this
Jay May 31, 2021

Amen, Amen, Amen!  Stand ups and Retrospectives are 2 things I think everyone should do.

Like Kristen Roth likes this
Shrikant Wagh July 6, 2021

Do you ever felt that standup are becoming a status meeting? Or team do not really have a good understanding of what is the purpose of standup meeting?

Like Kristen Roth likes this
Kristen Roth
Community Manager
Community Managers are Atlassian Team members who specifically run and moderate Atlassian communities. Feel free to say hello!
July 6, 2021

It's sooooo easy for Standup meetings to morph into something that feels more like a status meeting, @Shrikant Wagh. Perhaps a way to frame them up with your team is to make the purpose of Standup meetings more clear: Standups should feel more like collaborative planning than providing updates on the progress of assigned tasks.

Standup meetings allow all team members to get a glimpse into everyones' work, and with that increased transparency, help each other with any blockers that might stand in the way, share knowledge, and provide a way to identify collaboration opportunities.

Kishan Sharma
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
July 26, 2021

We do daily stand up virtually on Zoom and share each other updates!

Like Kristen Roth likes this
Paloma Fondon Araujo
Rising Star
Rising Star
Rising Stars are recognized for providing high-quality answers to other users. Rising Stars receive a certificate of achievement and are on the path to becoming Community Leaders.
July 26, 2021

Every day we do a daily stand up in the team, it seems to me something fundamental because everyone contributes what they know from their previous experience and problems and solutions are raised, before they were face to face and now remotely.

Like Kristen Roth likes this
Hana Kučerová
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
August 2, 2021

Hi,

today I've published an article about our version of regular team meetings... I doesn't make sense for us to meet on a daily basis, because we usually don't work on same projects...

Like Kristen Roth likes this
Kristen Roth
Community Manager
Community Managers are Atlassian Team members who specifically run and moderate Atlassian communities. Feel free to say hello!
August 2, 2021

Nice article, @Hana Kučerová !

Like Hana Kučerová likes this
Prashant Sangappa Shivashimpi August 10, 2021

Hi @Kristen Roth ,

 

Nice article and good informative one.. :) Thanks for sharing.

 

BR,

Prashant.

Like Kristen Roth likes this
Marjorie
Rising Star
Rising Star
Rising Stars are recognized for providing high-quality answers to other users. Rising Stars receive a certificate of achievement and are on the path to becoming Community Leaders.
October 14, 2021

Every day, couldn't operate without them.

Like Kristen Roth likes this
Shivam Desai December 19, 2022

We start every day's plan on the basis of these stand-ups.

Omar Mohamed Fathi
Rising Star
Rising Star
Rising Stars are recognized for providing high-quality answers to other users. Rising Stars receive a certificate of achievement and are on the path to becoming Community Leaders.
February 26, 2023

cant operate wothout

Like Eslam Gamal likes this
Dan Breyen
Rising Star
Rising Star
Rising Stars are recognized for providing high-quality answers to other users. Rising Stars receive a certificate of achievement and are on the path to becoming Community Leaders.
April 19, 2023

Standups, even virtual standups have value to just get a quick check of where everyone is at.  

TAGS
AUG Leaders

Atlassian Community Events