Six tips for effective daily standup meetings

Daily standup meetings aim to make sure all the software engineers on a team are aware of what everyone else is working on, collaboratively solve challenges and blockers, and drive the team forward to meet sprint goals.

Unfortunately, many standup meetings don't embody these ideals. They become pointless status update meetings where each software engineer recites their digital Jira and GitHub activity logs to their colleagues. They get hijacked by the most loquacious or ambitious team members. The standup meetings continue to spiral downwards as team members accurately begin to think of the meetings as a waste of time, leading them to participate less often and contribute less valueable information.

Have no fear if any of this sounds familiar to you. Effective standup meetings are the exception rather than the rule. Most are a waste of time. Thankfully, there are many things you can do to run more effective daily standup meetings.

1. Moderate the meetings

Many of the subsequent tips fall under the umbrella of this first tip. Somebody should moderate and lead the meeting to make sure that the team stays focused. The moderator can be the manager, scrum master, product manager, or a rotation of individual engineers.

2. Remind engineers not to list everything they've done

Standup meetings are not meant to be "justify your existence on the payroll" meetings. Information shared should be potentially useful to other software engineers on the team.

If an engineer shares an excessive amount of detail not useful for the rest of the team, some gentle feedback can help the engineer deliver more valuable updates in the future as well as shape the updates still left in the meeting. The moderator can thank the engineer for the valuable portions of the update and gently remind them that updates should be focused on blockers and other information that may be useful to other engineers to achieve sprint goals.

Often times a topic will arise that requires a more in-depth covnersation. It is the moderator's job to identify conversations that either don't require the presence of the whole team or require lengthier discussion than the standup meeting format provides. In these moments, the moderator should suggest returning back to the topic at the end of the meeting if there is time, continuing the discussion in a Slack thread, or scheduling a dedicated meeting. The moderator acknowledges the importance of the topic and refocuses the team on high-level updates.

4. Do not allow team members to hijack meetings

Standup meetings are not meant for spontaneous in-depth presentations or conversations about topics not immediately relevant to achieving sprint goals. Sometimes an engineer or a product manager will abuse standup time to talk about something else. If a team member brings up an irrelevant topic or powers up an unexpected slideshow, the moderator should check if the team agrees this is an important discussion to have in order to meet sprint goals. The moderator should then gently remind the hijacker that the standup meeting is not the correct format for their topic.

4. Time updates if needed

Some engineers talk more than others. If standup meetings are dominated by the same two or three voices over and over, the moderator might need to time updates to give everyone a chance to contribute. Depending on the nature of the problem, the moderator could limit time for updates and/or comments.

5. Consider occasional Slack standup updates.

Depending on the team, Slack standup updates could be a good alternative to the standard Zoom or in-person daily standup meeting. The manager can ask the team to put their updates in a Slack thread. Slack standup updates remove the need for the daily standup meeting that day. Some downsides to this approach include software engineers not reading the updates of others, providing an excessive amount of detail or irrelevant information, and not getting to see your team in person.

6. Use BeyondDone

BeyondDone has a Team page where the team can see their digital contributions across GitHub, Jira, and Confluence. All the information is organized by Jira epic and ticket. Consider sharing this screen during your next Standup. With the team page, the team can skip items like merged pull requests that are easily sourced from their digital history and focus on the important stuff, like blockers or self-organizing to overcome challenges.

BeyondDone has a 30-day free trial, no payment information is required. Try it today!