A simple scrum daily stand up meeting template
The daily stand up meeting (also known as “daily scrum” or “scrum standup”) is a daily short meeting that helps keep your team on the same page. And this template helps to keep your standup meetings focused and concise.
The daily standup meeting is designed to be short
The daily meetings are called stand-ups because they are designed to have everyone standing up during the meeting to create discomfort that reminds people to keep the meeting short and to-the-point.
The daily standup should last just about 15 minutes. With this short time-frame, it’s important to know what should be included and what should not be included in the daily standup meeting.
The goal of standup meetings is to align the team around what is happening in the business in a concise way. The daily meeting shouldn’t be a long meeting so it is not for discussing new ideas or complex issues (instead, if a great idea suddenly arises because of someone’s update, jot it down and schedule another meeting). Likewise, it shouldn’t consist of back-and-forth conversations with another teammate that you need help from (instead, raise your concern that you need help but schedule another time to further discuss after the all-team meeting).
The three questions to guide your daily standup meeting
A stand up agenda is usually just these 3 questions:
- What did you do since the last meeting?
- What will you do until the next meeting?
- Are there any roadblocks impacting your progress?
One important point to note when answering the above questions: the goal of the standup meeting is not to have everyone list out every single task in their workday. Instead, the goal is to align the team around who is doing what, what should be prioritized and if roadblocks and questions are properly addressed.
Tips on an effective daily standup meeting
- Time: the daily meeting should happen at the same time every work day. And even if someone can’t attend or is late, don’t skip the meeting and start the meeting on time. It’s better to have it with half the team than to skip the meeting entirely. If the team spans time zones and a live call isn’t realistic, run it async instead: everyone posts their update in the team channel by a set cutoff time. You lose the applause, but you keep the alignment.
- Everyone answers the 3 questions: each person’s update should be around 30-60 seconds. To help teammates be more focused and concise during their updates in the actual meeting, ask your teammates to fill in this template prior to the actual daily standup.
- Celebrate small wins: when someone shares good progress on a task, give a round of applause and show recognition. This helps to keep the team motivated.
- Wrap up: After everyone shares their updates, it’s good to have a quick wrap up by reminding the team of the short-term goals and whether the team is on track based on everyone’s updates.
