Daily stand-ups help identify any potential problems, challenges, and opportunities for improvement to be addressed in a remote team
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Also known as daily standup or scrum meetings, daily stand-ups are a key part of any modern company as they help ensure that everyone on the team is on the same page.
Kosy made running daily standups in a remote setting easy and convenient, allowing you to capitalize on the benefits of this crucial activity no matter where your team is located.
To set up a daily standup meeting in Kosy, simply go to the Design office tab and choose a meeting room from the template menu. Drag and drop it into your virtual office, adjust its design, and give it a name.
Now, your remote team has a designated space to meet for the daily scrum.
There are a few other things you can do in Kosy to make the standup meeting even more effective: (add screenshots for each)
Place a noticeboard from the Interactive tab in the room. Click on it to post the daily standup meeting agenda we've prepared for you below. This way remote workers can familiarize themselves with the meeting's purpose and structure before attending.
While in the meeting, use the Turn-taking app to help guide your employees through the different stages of the stand-up.
To sum up the meeting, use the Whiteboard app to better visualize what was discussed and ensure that everyone is on the same page.
As we'll discuss later, some suggest actually standing up during the meeting. So you might want to also remove the chairs from the virtual room and, to balance it out, spruce it up with plants. You can even do your daily stand-up next to a fire pit. Don’t get too comfortable - it’ll get too hot!
Now that you have a virtual space to hold the stand-up meeting, it's time to focus on the content of the meeting itself.
Daily stand-up, also known as the daily scrum, is a short meeting that takes place every day. The purpose of the daily stand-up is to give everyone on the team a chance to share what they’ve been working on, what they plan to work on next, and any challenges or obstacles they’re facing.
The modern image of this daily meeting has a fascinating origin story, rooted in rugby, Maori warrior dancing, and one million lines of code.
The most important thing to know is that daily stand-ups revolutionized the way software development teams communicate and collaborate. In a company where the final product depends on the efficient coordination of many different people’s work, daily stand-ups help save billions of dollars every year. And now, this same communication technique is being adopted in all kinds of industries, especially those operating with remote teams.
Daily stand-up meetings, as the name suggests, take place every day – typically in the morning. Jeff Sutherland, the father of the modern daily standup meeting, developed the following 3 rules for the meeting format which we still use today:
This one is pretty self-explanatory. The daily standup is often compared to an organization's heartbeat — giving it a consistent time slot helps ensure that everyone is on the same page, figuratively and literally.
While daily standup meetings are typically held in the morning, you can adjust the time to fit your team's needs. So if everyone is working remotely from different time zones, you might want to consider having a daily standup at the time when most team members are online and available, even if it's late in the work day.
However, it is important to ensure that everyone is attending the meeting at the same time. If the entire team is not present, it simply breaks down the most important aspect of daily standups — communication. This is tougher to pull off with distributed teams, however, it can be done.
This is probably the most important rule of thumb when it comes to daily standups. The goal is to keep the meeting concise and focused so that everyone can get back to work as soon as possible.
This can be hard to enforce in large teams, especially if some team members tend to trail off into side conversations. A good rule of thump is to limit daily stand-ups to 10 people. If you are more than that, you should probably consider splitting it up into smaller stand-ups.
In order to run effective standup meetings, a common solution is to ask your team to write down the key points they want to raise beforehand. This will make status reporting shorter, straight to the point, and adherent to meeting time.
Additionally, if you are practicing asynchronous standups, writing everything down before and after the meeting will ensure that the whole team is up to date on progress.
Since the daily standup is meant to be a time for the team to communicate, everyone should have a chance to speak. This includes not only project leads and managers, but also entry-level employees and new hires.
If someone on the team is not participating, it can disrupt the flow of information and make it difficult for the team to move forward.
There are a few techniques you can use to encourage active participation:
Another aspect of an effective standup meeting is the "stand up". It is widely encouraged that team members actually stand up during the meeting to help keep it short and focused.
Yes, even those working remotely should stand in front of their computers.
For your daily scrum meeting, you'll need a conference room for your team meeting that you've set up in Kosy.
You'll also need a task board to jot down the key points of the meeting and for this you can use a Google Doc or a Whiteboard app.
Once your remote team members have gathered in the conference room, set a timer for 15 minutes and go over the following meeting agenda:
When one team member is done sharing, the next person in the meeting will share their update. This process will continue until everyone has had a chance to speak.
One of the most common mistakes many teams commit in standup meetings is sticking to the "I did this... I'll do that" format. As Jeff Sutherland noted, people participating in the meeting should avoid giving a laundry list of status updates and instead approach the stand-up as a football huddle:
"A wide receiver might say, “I’m having a problem with that defensive lineman,” to which an offensive blocker might respond, “I’ll take care of that. I’ll open that line.” Or the quarterback might say, “Our running game is hitting a wall; let’s surprise them with a pass to the left.” The idea is for the team to quickly confer on how to move toward victory—i.e., complete the Sprint."
As we've mentioned before, daily stand-up meetings are now a common practice in many organizations as they help to improve communication and collaboration among team members.
Here is how your own team can benefit by introducing daily stand-up meetings:
Remote employees are already at risk of feeling isolated from the rest of the team and company.
That's why, by having a regular daily stand-up meeting, you can help to prevent this by ensuring that everyone is on the same page and knows what's going on with the project.
By keeping daily stand-up meetings short, you focus on key tasks without your mind drifting off-topic to less urgent stuff. This also allows you to avoid the back-and-forth of scheduling individual meetings for each task.
Improved communication leads to a more productive team as everyone is aware of what needs to be done and can better plan their workdays. This also helps to avoid duplication of effort as team members can share resources and ideas more effectively.
When everyone knows what everyone else is working on, it becomes easier to hold each other accountable. If someone is falling behind or not meeting their commitments, it will be more obvious to the rest of the team. However, it can also lead to finding solutions together as a team rather than simply pointing fingers.
By taking the time to celebrate each other's accomplishments (however small), you can help to boost team morale and keep everyone motivated.
If someone is struggling with a task or issue, the team can quickly brainstorm possible solutions during the daily stand-up. This way, you can avoid the frustration of someone being stuck on a problem for too long without any progress.
Since everyone is aware of what needs to be done and what's already been accomplished, sprint planning becomes much easier. This is because you can quickly identify any gaps in the current sprint and make sure that the next one is more focused.
Regular daily stand-up meetings reduce the need for long and unnecessary meetings since your entire team will stay up-to-date with the latest developments within the team.
As you can see, daily stand-up meetings go beyond a simple status report. When done right, they can be a powerful tool to improve communication and collaboration among your remote team members.
Participating in a daily stand-up can be challenging for remote teams. Not being in the same physical space can rob the employees of feeling the team spirit and a sense of togetherness which is crucial for this activity.
However, hosting a daily standup meeting in Kosy, where all employees can share a dedicated virtual room, can mitigate this challenge.
Being able to see their teammates in real-time sitting (or standing) in a Kosy virtual room, can help re-create that feeling of being in the same space and make the daily stand-up more impactful.
When done right, daily stand-up meetings are a great way to improve communication and collaboration among team members. They can also help to boost morale, increase productivity, and make sprint planning easier.
If you're thinking of introducing daily stand-ups to your team, Kosy is the perfect tool to help you get started. Our platform makes it easy to set up and host meetings in a virtual office so that you can focus on what's important - your team's success.
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