The sole goal of a daily stand-up is alignment between team members. We're aiming to make sure that everyone in the team is aware of what everyone else is working on, as well as identifying any problems or blockers that need resolving.
In a traditional co-located team, the daily standup will usually happen by the physical task board. The whole team will gather by the board and each team member will answer the following questions in turn:
- What have I done since last stand-up?
- What am I planning to do before next stand-up?
- Anything that's blocking my work right now.
These three questions provide a brief update on what everyone is working on and current progress on tasks. The third question provides an opportunity to raise blockers with the whole team, so they can be dealt with quickly.
In a distributed team it's not possible to all gather around the task board for a daily stand-up, so we need to think about what standups are trying to achieve... how to we keep the team aligned and informed?
Synchronous standups
If you work with people in a similar timezone you can run synchronous standups via zoom. Just like physical standups, these should be very short (< 10 mins) meetings that happen at the same time every day. The format is simple... each person answers the three questions above.
The key here is to keep theses calls as short as possible.
Asynchronous standups
In fully distributed teams it's impossible to hold daily synchronous standups. Instead, we should aim to rely on the effective use of Task Boards and async chat to communicate what we're working on and where we're blocked.
Some distributed teams use tools like Troopr to run standups via Slack, where everyone answers the three questions asynchronously.
Other asynchronous companies assume that the answers to the three questions are clearly communicated via task boards, and dedicate their standups to forming social bonds by saying "Hello and good morning".
Every company will have a different approach to running daily standups, but the one thing they will al have in common is the goal of keeping team members aligned and informed about what's happening in the team.
