Teams often have a daily catch-up, often referred to as a stand-up, where an update is provided by each member of the team. The standard approach to the daily updates is a 15 minute meeting where participants answer three questions:

  • What did you do yesterday?
  • What are you going to do today?
  • Are there any blockers?

In my experience it is not uncommon for 15 minutes to be exceeded. Sometimes this is for good reasons and isn’t really a problem if participants leave if they are not required for the extended discussion. However, if the meeting overruns regularly and is struggling to achieve what it sets out to do there are changes that can be made to help.

Below are some ideas on how to attempt to keep the meeting on time and on target.

Ideas

Focus on the work

Each participant should focus on activities related to the work specific to the team. There is no need to talk about non-team activities. e.g. if you have been to a community of practice meeting or to an all staff meeting.

Remember, it is not:

  • a competition to talk for the longest or list the most items
  • a way to show how busy you are

It is about:

  • highlighting impediments to your work and seeking help
  • providing an update to the team about work relevant to the team
  • attempting daily alignment

Use written updates and do it asynchronously

If there are a large number of people on the team you could try to send written updates via a messaging system such as Slack, Teams, etc. Using a couple of sentences to answer the questions is much better from the POV of allowing people to opt-in to which person’s update they consume.

Providing updates verbally forces it into a serial procedure where everybody waits until everybody has updated. In addition to extending the duration it also opens up questions about what order the updates go in. Is there a person prompting everybody in turn or does each person prompt another (potentially leading to additional delay when people are surprised to be going next and suddenly need to unmute themselves).

Content

In general

  • Include the id of the ticket, if updates are written as opposed to spoken

What was done yesterday

  • Ideally focus on outcomes or potentially outputs. Rather than worked on ticket #123, be more specific e.g. completed design of login screen, finished setting up deployment pipeline to pre-production, agreed and documented eligibility criteria for applications
  • Do not list the meetings you have been to. Instead, include the outcome of the meeting e.g. do not include ways of working meeting, include made progress on ways or working. Ideally it would be more specific than that e.g. agreed entry and exit criteria for tickets moving into the backlog

What will be done today

  • Try to state something that is tangible and can be completed e.g. rather than design workshop for backoffice prefer agree initial design of backoffice with stakeholders, rather than working on ticket #123 prefer implement updated branding on login screen
  • Consider listing meetings you are going to, particularly if they are relevant to other team members who might not have been invited. However, bare in mind this is an easy way to have meeting attendance balloon.