The same type of meeting can have more than one name and format; sometimes it's referred to as a "daily scrum" by your development team, or other groups or team members might refer to it as a "status update meeting" or "roll-call."
Despite the change in name or format, the goal behind these meetings is the same — a quick progress update to the rest of the team and/or to get support on blockers. These standup meetings put into focus which work items are immediate priorities and how team members can help overcome impediments.
This article will dive into the purpose of running daily standup meetings and share some tips and tools to help you get the most out of your daily huddle.
The purpose of a daily standup is connected to project management. The daily status meeting ensures that the whole team is available to answer the questions:
At its best, the daily standup meeting helps keep everyone on track with strategic goals. The consistency helps to align team members on key tasks and fosters collaboration across the entire team.
When a meeting is mismanaged, daily standups can seem like a waste of time, pulling the team from competing priorities. After too many unproductive meetings, the risk can lead to disengagement and ultimately employee turnover. To learn how you can avoid this, keep reading.
Since the optimal daily standup should not exceed 15 minutes in length, it’s crucial to set and stick to an agenda.
In most-every standup, the three questions to answer are:
These questions will reveal to the group what their coworkers are working on and potentially where they can lend a hand, and then it's on to the next person.
The standup meeting is not the place for problem-solving since the goal is to keep the meeting short and sweet. The facilitator will pay attention to the time to ensure that the group stays on topic. If needed, team members will meet separately via other channels to brainstorm once they've decided to collaborate.
That said, if you opt for a traditional daily standup format it can pose some additional challenges for your remote team for a few reasons:
These logistical challenges make a compelling case for an asynchronous meeting format for remote teams since it provides more flexible response times. Using apps like Polly for daily standups also means that you have a system of record that allows you to meaningfully keep track of team goals.
As we mentioned earlier, daily standup meetings have the same goals but may differ in how they’re carried out. Let’s talk about format since there are a few key differences in how synchronous and asynchronous sessions benefit teams.
When we say daily standup, most people default to thinking of synchronous meetings; here are some of the key traits of this format:
This has evolved to a newer format for daily standups as workplaces have adapted to remote or hybrid models. Here are some key qualities:
With synchronous meetings, much time goes into determining the appropriate length of the session, which time of day the meeting should occur, and how frequently it should happen. It can be challenging to reach a consensus when members are sprawled out in different timezones or have mismatched peak productivity hours within their day.
Asynchronous meetings alleviate that struggle by providing a reasonable window of time that allows your remote team members to answer at a time that is best for them.
Using Polly for asynchronous meetings is a flexible way to help a distributed team be more efficient.
Since the app integrates well with tools your team is already using, it’s an effortless way to keep everyone up-to-date with tasks and projects. It’s all referenced and accessible in-app, so team members can attend to business priorities without ever feeling that they’re “missing out” on valuable information.
If you're interested in testing an asynchronous daily standup format within your team, Polly has the right features to make it a seamless experience.
A safe way to get started is to replace one or two synced daily meetings with an asynchronous format. This balance helps reduce meeting fatigue while still keeping some of that human connection while working remotely.
In general, Polly offers more convenience, efficiency, and focus for your entire team.
Here’s how:
Pro tips: Ensure team buy-in by explaining the purpose for the format change (more flexibility) and empower them to provide meeting feedback. Change can be uncomfortable for some, so it can be helpful to provide this context.
Polly customers who have switched to asynchronous daily standup meetings love the results they see when they can achieve the same caliber of updates in one-quarter of the time.
Platforms like Slack, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams have become like our virtual conference rooms, and there's a smart way to work with them that saves everyone time.
Try Polly for free to see how it seamlessly integrates with the tools you're already using to enhance meetings and the quality of team feedback. When standups run smoothly, it allows the team to stay updated, connected, and supported without disrupting their workflow, and that's something your team will continue to appreciate and benefit from all day long.