Daily Standup
Brief daily team sync on progress and blockers
The Daily Standup, also called Daily Scrum, is a brief daily meeting where team members synchronize work, share progress, and identify blockers. This timeboxed ceremony, typically fifteen minutes, keeps teams aligned and enables rapid problem-solving. The standup happens at the same time and place daily, with team members standing to encourage brevity. Each person addresses three questions: What did I accomplish yesterday? What will I work on today? What blockers or impediments do I face? The focus is coordination not status reporting. Team members share information relevant to others, highlight dependencies, and surface issues requiring help. The standup is not for problem-solving; detailed discussions happen afterward with relevant people. Benefits include maintaining team alignment on sprint goals, identifying blockers early before they delay work, fostering collaboration through awareness of others' work, building team accountability and commitment, and enabling quick course corrections. Common anti-patterns include standups becoming status reports to managers rather than team coordination, exceeding the timebox through detailed discussions, team members not listening to each other, focusing on completed tasks not progress toward goals, and allowing blockers to persist without action. Effective standups require the right people attending, staying focused and brief, actionable identification of blockers with follow-up, and genuine team collaboration rather than ritual. The Scrum Master facilitates, ensuring the ceremony stays productive while the team self-organizes around commitments. For remote teams, standups may be async, but real-time brings higher engagement.
Understand Daily Standup in Agile and Scrum. Learn how short daily meetings keep teams aligned and identify impediments quickly.