Small changes that made our daily stand-ups more useful
32 comments
·August 5, 2025agentultra
> Daily stand-ups are a cornerstone of agile software development
A cornerstone of micro-management, at best.
Daily stand-ups can work when there is no manager present and it's just the people working on what they need to get done.
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ls-a
I agree. The best experience i had was with a startup that had zero video calls and audio calls were rare.
dkoprowski
In my setup there is no manager there, only me as a team leader but I'm also one of the developers at the same time.
scott_w
I like the suggestion to look at the system status.
One thing I’d suggest you try is to switch from people-centric to work-centric standup. Instead of going person by person, pick your rightmost “in progress” column and get an update on that issue. What’s needed? Who needs to help? That sort of stuff.
I find this moves through the standup fairly quickly and puts the focus on how to get things done. It also highlights when something isn’t clear for the team and you can follow up after.
hshdhdhj4444
What I struggle with is that any blockers or delays that I may have, I’ve already signaled in our team chat.
And the social pressure against saying “I didn’t do much” is tremendous, and it’s hard for anyone who cannot completely abandon worrying about what others may think of them to admit that, even if they have a reason to do so.
An actual progress report meeting 1-2 times a week is so much better.
SoftTalker
If I have stuff I didn't finish yesterday, I will usually just say "continuing work on foo" and if there was a blocker that delayed me I will mention that otherwise I don't get into reasons why, that's not really the point of a standup unless someone else can do something about it.
scott_w
And that’s fine, just say so and who’s helping you unblock it and move on. The stand up is to make sure nothing gets missed because the conversation that needed to be had didn’t happen.
SoftTalker
We don't report on yesterday in standup unless it's about a blocker that was hit yesterday.
Yesterday is history, can't change it, and it's documented in commit messages or bug tracker notes. No point in rehashing it for the group.
We report what I am planning for today and any blockers.
theboywho
This is an example of when Daniel Kahneman said that people don’t believe in something because there are arguments but believe the arguments because they believe in something. Here’s why I think so:
> syncing plans and priorities for the current day
Most of the work developers do require syncing multiple times a day, either by slack messages, GitHub comments or pair programming, etc. Waiting for the daily to sync is not realistic and would waste tons of time.
> signaling blockers early so the team can help
If you have a blocker and you wait until the daily to mention it, you have a bigger problem. Blockers should be notified right away and most teams do this over slack or other messaging platforms they use.
> encouraging collaboration and knowledge sharing
Teams are usually small, and if you don’t already know what someone is doing, you wouldn’t care what they have to say during the daily, and if you care what they have to say, you already know what they are doing.
> building a sense of team ownership and support.
Just go for a coffee break.
If you believe daily standups are useful, chances are you’re actually part of the problem.
scott_w
> If you have a blocker and you wait until the daily to say it, you have a bigger problem. Blockers should be notified right away and most team do this over slack or other messaging platforms they use.
They should but it doesn’t always happen. Having a stand up makes sure you can get that information into the open.
This holds for literally everything. You shouldn’t hold back conversations for your 1-on-1 but, if you don’t have them, you’ll find there’s a load of conversations you miss out on that you needed to have.
theboywho
Having a daily standup might be encouraging people to wait until the daily to mention blockers, which could be harming your team all while you think it’s working
CER10TY
Props to you if you manage to follow this and squeeze it into 15 minutes. I‘ve genuinely never had a daily last less than 60 mins.
alexjplant
"Scrum" is one of those terms like "jam band" or "martini" or "DevOps" that people throw around way too liberally to describe things that they like that are similar but actually completely different. If you try and get people to do real Scrum ceremonies and roles as written you'll run into a host of excuses as to why they can't (or, as is more often the case, just don't want to). This is how you end up with a "daily stand-up" that only happens when Jupiter isn't in declination, is attended by between 0 and n + 3 people where n is the actual team size, and lasts up to an hour and a half with a strong possibility of not everybody giving their required status. Oh, and everybody is sitting down. At a stand-up.
Scrum might not be perfect for every situation but it's a damn sight better than a swirling miasma of agenda-less quasi-recurring meeting invites buttressed by orphaned Google Docs and Slack threads. I've worked on exactly one team where we pretty much did Scrum to the letter and it was great. Meetings were short and sweet and we always knew what we had to build or fix. I was just a kid and we were using a super-janky tech stack but it was among the most productive, low-stress times in my career.
taude
Your team needs coaching, then. Unless you're getting status from 30 people....which would be a whole other conversation.
CER10TY
I‘m long gone from that team (thankfully). But hey, the Scrum Master was certified, I‘m sure it‘s all proper /s
ratelimitsteve
We do something really similar to this and we're usually through 6 or 7 people in 15 minutes
dkoprowski
Yeah, we do this basically automatically right now, so it is fast. There are really rare cases when we would need more than 15 minutes. We do more serious stuff asynchronous over Slack or in a smaller round after daily with only affected people.
ramy_d
that's insane. how many of you are there?
CER10TY
We were 5 people total - PO, Scrum Master, 3 devs. Been years since I was in that team but it was expected that everyone would give a lengthy update about the previous day
SketchySeaBeast
That's 12 minutes a person. How much time did it take 3 devs to say "I worked on 12343, I plan on working on 12354, no blockers"? I assume it was the PO/SM that drug it out?
neilv
This improved update looks entirely like what could've instead been communicated asynchronously.
And some of it is not as timely as it could've been, because it was held back for the standup.
> Here is my attempt to improve such update:
> > Yesterday, I fixed a sidebar flickering bug.
> > Please review my PR soon as it is annoying for customers.
> > I started a video player story that we discussed at the last refinement.
> > Since it’s my first time working with the player module, I’d appreciate pairing up or any tips from someone familiar with it.
> > Today, my focus is on wiring up the play/pause functionality. Happy to sync after stand-up if anyone’s available.
taude
I used to run standups using a Slack plug-in, because my team was in several different time zones. It was really effective. We met once/week in a meeting....
kerblang
My team does this, with the only downside that people are unlikely to pay attention. It at least satisfies mgmt without getting the team bogged down for an hour.
But if there's a problem I already bring it up via online chat, and will at least get private messages from the extremely shy people (which is most of them).
scott_w
If stand up takes an hour, there’s some real issues there. I have the occasional one take longer but they generally last 5-10 minutes. Anything that needs discussion is taken to separate calls.
sda2
If I can’t report on what I did yesterday in excrutiating detail, how will I justify my job and avoid layoffs?
dkoprowski
You can report on that, yesterday log can give the team important signals. It’s mentioned there. I encourage to focus on planning and cooperation though. Mainly cooperation so even when reporting yesterdays work it’s worth to emphasise things that impact others.
dctoedt
The SPUR Agenda can be helpful as a template:
• Status (good and bad — things done and left undone)
• Plans (incl. contingency plans)
• Uncertainties (untested assumptions, upsides/downsides, etc.)
• Reports? (e.g., document any agreements reached)
Okkef
I noticed that by asking my team a quick set of questions after our "good morning" virtual coffee corner helped them focus on the important stuff:
What are you up to today? Any blockers? What do you need help with?
A regularly scheduled standup meeting where people get up and go to a room or turn on Zoom is a productivity killer for devs but is good at making managers feel plugged in.
In my experience the daily standup meeting is a sign of dysfunction or obsession with process. Both of which aren't good for productivity and morale.
You can communicate blockers, requests for assistance, status updates, and anything else more effectively in a daily asynchronous team slack chat.