5 tips for effective standups

When my mom was young they didn't have standups. Everyone just started their day in the break room, making coffee, kvetching about how much the bosses suck and all the work there is to do.

Oh wait, that's standup 🤔

Here's how you can lead a good standup. I've seen these take less than 5 minutes even on very large teams.

Hide the Done column
Talk about today, not yesterday
No solutioning
Summarize plans
End with main goal for today

That's it. You now have a team that knows what to focus on for today, knows when to say No and ignore distractions, can help each other get shit done. A team version of my daily Work ritual that keeps me sane 🤘

When someone says they need help and another starts helping, cut them off and say "Ok I'm hearing Alice and Bob are meeting up after standup to work on X". Anyone can say this, but it's most effective from the person running standup that day.

When someone starts sharing a detailed description of what they did yesterday, cut them off and say "Great! Does that mean X is done? Is there a PR we can look at?".

The goal of standup is not to impress each other with how much work we do. It's to talk about next steps. We know you work hard, no need to brag. Just tell us what you need next :)

Cheers,
~Swizec

PS: you won't always have to interrupt people to keep things moving. They'll get the hint and start doing it themselves.