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Template for daily standup meeting
The only daily stand up meeting template you need
Daily standups are useful but can quickly go sideways if not done properly.
Arjun Rajkumar
October 06, 2024
You may think that following a daily standup template is overkill - but without a good template, the daily meeting will go on for more than 15+ minutes, become less useful, and begin to waste everyone's time.
While working with Bukukas, we had a team of around 15 engineers, working out of Bangalore, Indonesia and Europe and we followed a daily standup template where everyone had to attend one daily standup at around 3-4PM India time. The standup was hosted by a product manager, and it followed the usual path - where every one in the group briefly says what they worked on that day, including blockers if any.
The good parts of the daily standup was that it allowed me to get a sense of the whole project. I was a Ruby on Rails backend developer - and there were android developers, and React FE developers on the team - so, hearing from them what they were working on gave me a better understanding of the whole sprint. Not really critical information, but it was good to be aware of what everyone on the team was working on. Also, it usually lasted not more than 15 minutes - as we only talked briefly on the things we did. Everything was written in detail on Trello for the sprint, so the daily standup was mainly for the team leader and the PM to get a sense of how the project was progressing everyday. Also, if someone was stuck on something, or more often if a junior dev was doing something in a complicated way, it was usually spotted in the meeting. But sometimes it did go sideways. I remember a few times the PM or a developer being late, and everyone waiting around for them to shop up. Also, most times discussions on solutions to blockers were not really relevant to me, but I still had to be present.
Here are a few daily standup meeting templates that you can use to make sure that the meeting remains useful and productive to everyone involved:
While working with Bukukas, we had a team of around 15 engineers, working out of Bangalore, Indonesia and Europe and we followed a daily standup template where everyone had to attend one daily standup at around 3-4PM India time. The standup was hosted by a product manager, and it followed the usual path - where every one in the group briefly says what they worked on that day, including blockers if any.
The good parts of the daily standup was that it allowed me to get a sense of the whole project. I was a Ruby on Rails backend developer - and there were android developers, and React FE developers on the team - so, hearing from them what they were working on gave me a better understanding of the whole sprint. Not really critical information, but it was good to be aware of what everyone on the team was working on. Also, it usually lasted not more than 15 minutes - as we only talked briefly on the things we did. Everything was written in detail on Trello for the sprint, so the daily standup was mainly for the team leader and the PM to get a sense of how the project was progressing everyday. Also, if someone was stuck on something, or more often if a junior dev was doing something in a complicated way, it was usually spotted in the meeting. But sometimes it did go sideways. I remember a few times the PM or a developer being late, and everyone waiting around for them to shop up. Also, most times discussions on solutions to blockers were not really relevant to me, but I still had to be present.
Here are a few daily standup meeting templates that you can use to make sure that the meeting remains useful and productive to everyone involved:
- Allow people to not say anything. The pressure to say something just to be included is real in daily standups. Not many people I worked with were comfortable saying "Nothing to add." or "All good!". I think making it normal for people to give one word answers in daily standups will result in more productive meetings.
- Discuss solutions afterwards. No one wants to spend 30+ minutes hearing solutions to problems they are not involved in. If a blocker has been spotted in the daily standup meeting, the ideal way is to assign people to that problem and discuss it AFTER the daily standup.
Prioritize everyone's time and keep the meetings short. Not more than 15 minutes. The lesser the better. I would even encourage you to use a timer, so everyone is aware that these daily standup meetings are short.
Choose a time that is convenient for everyone. Because we had developers in different time zones, it was a pain as it interrupted the deep-work state for many developers. If you can, do it asynchronously.
Don't use the daily standup to check if someone is working or not. Daily standups are useful to get a sense of the project, and to catch things when they are slipping up - but it should not be used to check if someone is doing the work or not.
Focus. Avoid any questions that are not related to what people are working on, or the blockers.
When done well, daily standups provide a lot of value to the PM and the developers involved. The PM is the only one who is looking at all the features in a sprint, and the daily standup gives them a better understanding of how things are progressing. Along with regular weekly reports, it gives the team more context and awareness into what everyone is working on, and provides a quick way to deal with blockers they may face daily.