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

[Kristen Roth]

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! 

[Becky Rubenstein]

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.

[Kristen Roth]

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

[Danno]

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

[Kristen Roth]

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

[Danno]

@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]

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.

[Kristen Roth]

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

[Sajit Nair _Trundl_]

yes. They are the hearbeat for our teams.

[Kristen Roth]

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

[Soumyadeep Mandal]

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

[Kristen Roth]

Totally agree, @Soumyadeep Mandal!

[Walter Buggenhout]

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!

[Kristen Roth]

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 ?

[Walter Buggenhout]

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?

[Kristen Roth]

@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.

[Walter Buggenhout]

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.

[Becky Rubenstein]

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]

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]

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).

[Kristen Roth]

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

[Deepanshu Natani]

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

[Kristen Roth]

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]

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

[Jack Brickey]

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?? 

[Kristen Roth]

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]

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

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

[Alexander SRed]

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. 

[Gonchik Tsymzhitov]

@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. 

[Dave]

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!

[Gonchik Tsymzhitov]

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

[Dave]

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.

[Gonchik Tsymzhitov]

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

[Charlie Misonne]

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.

[Kristen Roth]

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

[Gonchik Tsymzhitov]

@Charlie Misonne  Nice meme :) Thank you! 

[Stanislav]

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

[Matteo Gubellini [SoftComply]]

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

[Çiğdem Büyükaşik]

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]

Sounds like a great system, @Çiğdem Büyükaşik !

[M Amine]

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

[Jay]

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

[Shrikant Wagh]

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?

[Kristen Roth]

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]

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

[Paloma Fondon Araujo]

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.

[Hana Kučerová]

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...

[Kristen Roth]

Nice article, @Hana Kučerová !

[Prashant Sangappa Shivashimpi]

Hi @Kristen Roth ,

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

BR,

Prashant.

[Marjorie]

Every day, couldn't operate without them.

[Shivam Desai]

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

[Omar Mohamed Fathi]

cant operate wothout

[Dan Breyen]

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