Standup

Avi Siegel

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6 min read

What is Standup?

Standup is a recurring ceremony used on Agile teams where the development team briefly talks through what they have been working on, what they plan on working on, and anything that might be blocking progress. This short, focused meeting helps ensure everyone is aligned, working on the right tasks, and able to overcome any challenges quickly.

Standups are typically done daily, although some teams prefer to do them less often (anywhere from one to three times per week). The ceremony is classically done in person, but as remote work has become more popular, they may be done virtually; some teams even choose to do them asynchronously.

By their original definition, standups involve the team literally standing up during the ceremony - thus the name. The idea was that the meeting should be quick (typically timeboxed to 15 minutes), and should not devolve into deep discussions or lengthy status updates - if everyone is standing, they will grow physically tired by standing, and that will naturally ensure the meeting does not last longer than necessary.

What are the goals of Standup?

The primary goals of standup are to:

  • Keep everyone on the team aligned

  • Update the team on the status of ongoing work

  • Inform the team of upcoming work priorities

  • Address any impediments to progress

What is involved in the Standup ceremony?

Standup is a typically 15 minute meeting during which each member of the engineering team talks through their work - progress they’ve made, plans for their next set of work, and any blockers that may have come up which should be discussed.

The below activities will be performed by the team.

Display the board (optional)

The engineering manager (EM) can optionally show the board so that all relevant tasks are in view. The purpose of this is not to go through every individual task, but rather to serve as nudges for engineers to remind them what tasks may be worth bringing up to the team.

Pro Tip: Show the board. Humans are forgetful; the board acts as a gentle reminder which can be incredibly helpful in triggering the appropriate memories and getting the engineers talking. Better yet, go beyond broad nudges at the task level, and use a system that provides nudges one level deeper. This strategy will ensure that your standups are not full of an endless chorus of "um", "I forget", "let me think".

Provide updates

Each engineer will take turns giving their respective updates to the team.

Most often, this takes the form of Yesterday / Today / Blockers:

  • Yesterday: what they have been working on

  • Today: what they plan on working on next

  • Blockers: any issues that have arisen that should be discussed and addressed to unblock work

Pro Tip: Be conversational. The above format should be used more as a guideline than a rule. If you are too strict and formal, the meeting can easily become a dry statement-of-fact session, which ends up being more of a check-the-box exercise that is less valuable to the team.

Review action items

As the meeting progresses, the engineering manager or product manager (PM) will be noting the need for any follow-up. This could include such areas as:

  • Scheduling a separate meeting to dive deeper into a technical challenge

  • Redistributing workload if someone has too much on their plate

  • Escalating a blocker to leadership

  • Shifting priorities based on new information

  • Arranging a code review

  • Etc.

Any topics which can not be addressed immediately should be assigned as action items to specific team members. These action items and assignees should be reiterated before the meeting is over to ensure everyone understands and acts on their individual responsibilities.

Pro Tip: Do not assume that someone will take care of a given action item without being tasked to do so directly; assign someone as the responsible party. This is true of all action items, but especially true for blockers which are by their very nature impeding progress.

Who should attend Standups?

Standups should be kept small for the sake of efficiency (i.e., so it stays within the 15 minute cap). The only attendees should be the members of the product and engineering teams involved with the work.

The following individuals should be invited to standup:

  • Engineering manager (to facilitate the meeting, and provide updates if they are also an individual contributor)

  • Engineering team (to provide updates)

  • Product manager (to provide context and answer any questions as necessary, as well as stay informed on progress)

Pro Tip: Do not invite individuals outside the product and engineering teams directly involved with the discussed work. That means no customer success, no support reps, no designers, no other product managers or engineers, no sales, no product marketers, etc. If individuals are invited from these other teams, inevitably debates about priorities and solutions end up monopolizing the meeting.

How should the team prepare for Standup?

All invitees should come to standup ready to discuss their respective work. Beyond that, each role should further prepare as detailed below:

Engineering manager

The engineering manager should be prepared to facilitate the meeting. It is their responsibility to keep the meeting on track - to ensure updates are kept at a level that is useful to the rest of the team, and to shut down (and schedule for a separate time) any conversations that go too deep.

The EM should also be fully aware of all work happening across the entire team, with a specific focus on potential obstacles that the developers may face, so they can keep the team moving forward efficiently.

Engineering team

Individual engineers should review the board before standup, and come to the meeting prepared to provide concise updates about the tasks they have been working on, the tasks that they plan on working on next, and any blockers to their work. They should be familiar enough with the work that they are aware of which information is relevant to bring up to the team, and which is too in the weeds to warrant discussion.

Pro Tip: While simple, this preparation step is highly important and cannot be understated. Create a culture that discourages a lack of preparation by engineers. It is all too common for engineers to not prepare, and when it is their turn to address the team, be left fumbling over their words, trying to remember what they did, forgetting blockers which would be useful to discuss, etc. It is not an efficient use of the team’s time to watch each other rack their brains trying to remember what they’ve been working on.

Product manager

The product manager should be focused on planning, not status. As such, they should be prepared to discuss any existing or changed priorities, so they can direct or redirect engineers as necessary.

The PM should also be knowledgeable of all tasks on the board that may be discussed during standup, so they can provide any necessary context or answer any relevant questions.

Best practices for Standup

  • Keep updates high-level. The intent is for everyone on the team to have enough information that the team can collaborate with and help each other when useful, while also trusting that each individual team member can handle their responsibilities.

  • Stick to the time limit. If you are too lax with the time constraints, the meeting can easily devolve into lengthy updates and discussions that are not useful for the entire team to sit through.

  • No multitasking. It is completely understandable for engineers that are in the middle of their work to not want to lose their context because of this ceremony. However, if the team isn’t listening to each other, then they can’t help each other, and the meeting will become useless.

  • Give the team time to close out (quick) questions and conversations. Strictly speaking, such side discussions are supposed to be handled in separately scheduled meetings. But be reasonable, with an eye toward productivity. For example, if a 30 second conversation can unblock someone, let it happen - that’s far more efficient than scheduling a follow-up meeting.

  • Do not do standups asynchronously. This often becomes most tempting when teams find that the ceremony has lost its value - everyone simply comes to give their update, while ignoring everyone else’s (likely because they are trying, but failing, to multitask). Instead of changing the format to be async (which only serves to force the meeting to be a mere status update with no chance for collaboration), try to get back to that lost value by addressing what is going wrong with the meeting in the first place.