Introduction
Becoming Agile in your ways of working allows teams to adopt structured, repeatable processes focused on delivering incremental value. It also fosters collaboration, transparency, and continuous improvement.
The next series of posts will look into what should be considered as the four essential Agile meetings/ceremonies:
Daily Standups;
Sprint Planning;
Sprint Retrospectives, and;
Sprint Review/Showcase.
Each post will focus on one of these meetings. With a focus on the goals for each ceremony, best practices, potential pitfalls, and tips for facilitation to ensure your teams can get the most value from them.
Becoming Agile is a process of maturing the use of these meetings as a key management focus that will support building your high performing, self organising team. Each of these ceremonies serves a distinct purpose that helps to enhance communication, accountability, and transparency.
Agile meetings provide dedicated opportunities for teams to align, engage, and adapt their work. The meetings will promote an inclusive work environment where contributions are recognised, and when something isn’t progressing as expected, it doesn’t go unnoticed. These practices help create a culture where everyone’s efforts are seen, appreciated, and continuously refined for better outcomes.
This post will focus on daily standups.
Daily Standups
Purpose and Goals
The Daily Standup, also referred to as the Daily Scrum, is a short, timeboxed meeting aimed at fostering team alignment and providing visibility into the progress of the sprint. Standups are timeboxed to 15 minutes and should be held at the same time and place each day to establish a routine. The name “standup” comes from the idea that attendees remain standing, encouraging brevity.
The primary goals of a Daily Standup are:
Ensuring every team member is aware of what others are working on.
Highlighting any relevant risks, blockers or impediments that may affect progress.
Reinforcing accountability by encouraging team members to discuss their daily tasks.
Strengthening collaboration and fostering a culture of shared understanding and ownership.
Format
The typical format involves each team member answering three key questions:
1. What did I do yesterday?
2. What will I do today?
3. Are there any blockers or impediments to my work?
Each team member sharing what they are working on is not about micro-management, sharing work not only keeps the team informed, but also reinforces each team member’s value and the value of their work - both to the team and the organisation.
Example Standup Updates
Imagine a team working on a new application to support the delivery of a new product or service.
These examples aren’t perfect, but if you are unfamilar with standups, hopefully they give you an idea of how I team member might respond to the Scrum Master/facilitator:
Day 1
Kirsty (Developer): Yesterday, I finished the login feature. Today, I’ll start on the password reset functionality. No blockers.
Bob (Tester): Yesterday, I tested the profile page updates. Today, I’ll verify the login feature Kirsty completed. Blocker: Waiting for test data from the API team.
Carol (Team Lead): Yesterday, I followed up on the deployment issue. Today, I’ll sync with the API team to resolve Bob’s blocker.
Day 2
Kirsty (Developer): I made progress on the password reset feature. Today, I’ll complete it and start unit tests. No blockers.
Bob (Tester): I verified the login feature and found a small UI bug. Today, I’ll retest after Kirsty’s fix. No blockers.
Carol (Team Lead): I got the API issue resolved yesterday. Today, I’ll check on any deployment updates, review the sprint backlog and work on the Risk Paper for the Board. I have a potential blocker, because I haven’t heard from the client with their input to the Risk Paper, I will follow up and also let the Board Chair know.
Day 3
Kirsty (Developer): Yesterday was a good day, I got the password reset feature done. Today, I’ll review the code with Bob and start working on developing the admin dashboard. Maybe not a blocker, but I will need to spend some time with a more experienced developer today or tomorrow to clarify how to do one of the features if they have time.
Bob (Tester): I started testing the password reset feature, and it’s almost ready to go. Today, finish the test cases and then I’ll prepare for regression testing. No blockers.
Carol (Team Lead): I reviewed the backlog and updated tasks. Today, I’ll draft the Sprint Review slide deck and send it out to the team for input. I heard back from the client so will incorporate their feedback, and Kirsty - I’ll check with other development team and try and get you the time with an experienced developer.
Best Practices
1. Stick to the Timebox: Ensure the meeting doesn’t exceed 15 minutes. If deeper discussions are needed, they can be taken offline.
2. Focus on Collaboration: Avoid turning the standup into a status report to the Scrum Master or Product Owner. The meeting is for the team.
3. Use a Visual Aid: Many teams use a task board or digital tool (e.g., Jira, Trello, or Azure DevOps) to quickly reference progress.
4. Encourage Growth: frame the standup as part of the team’s learning process. It’s okay not to be perfect right away—continuous improvement is key.
Note: Digital tools have come a long way and I recommend using whatever one works for you. It is rare for teams to all work in one location these days, but when working in the same physical location, I still like a physical Kanban Board. It can give you a real sense of the volume of tasks you’re bringing into a sprint. Second, you can see clearly what people are pro-actively writing tasks and moving their tickets around. But my favourite reason, I loved throwing the done tickets in the bin at the end, it was really cathartic.
Common Pitfalls
Status Reporting Mindset: during the process of Becoming Agile team members may fall into the habit of reporting vague updates directed to a single person (usually the boss), rather than seeing standups as communicating with every one in the team.
Sidetracks or Lengthy Discussions: it can be easy to derail the standup with problem solving discussions, or to try and cover things during a standup outside of what actual work got done yesterday, what the goals are for today, and what your risks and and blockers are. It is important to focus on the timebox for a standup and encourage people to collaborate on discussing the details and detailed actions to work through challenges and issues to remove blockers and impediments through actions outside of standup.
Team Members not Preparing: morning standup isn’t meant to be an improvised monologue, team members need to be thinking about what their teammates need to know. Team members need to be updating their tasks in the boards, and planning ahead of time what their update will be at standup. This will improve the quality and value of the standup meeting. While you might think that it should not be hard to think about what work got done yesterday, it is important to acknowledge that it takes practice and focus to learn how to articulate this information meaningfully to the team.
Misunderstanding Intent: early on, team members may under-estimate what they will do each day thinking they will get in trouble if they don’t do it. They may also massively overstate what they will get done in a day, and then start making excuses as to why they didn’t do it when it was just over-estimation or not appreciating the complexity of the work. Be clear with the team that the real intention is for the team to build confidence and competence in demonstrating their understanding of progressing the task.
This doesn’t all happen through standups, it starts in Sprint Planning and how the tasks are written up in the Boards. This helps make it easier to track and reporting on that progress in morning standups. If you need to “fix” morning standups, start by looking at these elements too.
Expecting Immediate Awesomeness: part of the learning when Becoming Agile is learning to manage to what the “definition of done” or complete is in the Sprint and having clarity around who needs to do what tasks when so that it gets done.
The same is true of risks and blockers, as team members, some of these might be potential likelihoods and impacts called out in Sprint Planning. But in standups, you want to work towards them being called out early, and not landing with a thud late in a Sprint without time to intervene to resolve them. You want the team to work towards being able to identify them early, and be able to show, as much as is possible, who and what will help remove their blockers, or ask for help from someone who does at standup, so they can be unblocked.
Effective standups don’t just happen, and some people in tbe team might take longer to get what they are about. As part of Becoming Agile, you will need to make some time each day to for coaching the team outside of standup meetings. If you do this in standups, they will drag and go over time and lose their intended focus. Remember to look at the Sprint Planning, how the tasks are written up and chunked out, and how this flows into their reporting at standup. During this process, you might reveal that some team members do not understand their work or role, but that isn’t the intent of standup meetings. The good news though, is that it will give you specifics to help manage through this process.
Deciding Not Daily: in the early stages of Becoming Agile, a common misconception about daily standups is that meeting every day feels excessive, especially in busy teams. Some people may even have experiences working in agile teams with standups only two or three times a week, thinking it works better for them or that they are being more efficient. However, reducing their frequency or skipping them altogether often leads to misalignment, unnoticed blockers, and a loss of shared momentum. Without regular check-ins, small issues can escalate, priorities can drift, and collaboration opportunities can be missed.
What’s more, teams that cut down on standups often find that the time they think they’re saving gets spent elsewhere - longer ad-hoc meetings, writing long emails, or team members being left out of side conversations to realign and problem-solve. These fragmented discussions are lost learning opportunities and can end up being more disruptive than a short, focused daily standup.
If daily standups don’t feel valuable, the solution isn’t to stop having them - it’s to improve how they’re run. Remember, Becoming Agile is not a solo, top down activity. It is up to the entire team to make standups meaningful by sharing relevant updates, flagging risks, and keeping discussions focused. A well-run standup keeps work aligned, ensures team members feel connected and supported, and enables quick adjustments that ultimately save time and effort.
Tips for Facilitation
Consider rotating the facilitator/Scrum Master role: this will ensure everyone gets a chance to lead the meeting and understand how important everyone’s role is in making a morning standup work and it doesn’t become one person’s “job”.
It also helps people appreciate what a good update sounds like and allows them to show some of their leadership and personality as a facilitator, and appreciating the importance of facilitation.
Encourage Early Blocker Identification: Prompt team members to raise blockers as soon as they occur. This can be done through task boards, ensuring timely resolution.
Reinforce Positivity: Acknowledge progress and small wins during standups to maintain a positive atmosphere.
Team Charter for Standups
To help build a positive team culture around standups, consider creating a team charter for standups can be done over a few collaborative sessions involving everyone early in the process of becoming agile. This gives the entire team a chance to define and have input into how they want to run their standups as a way to foster ownership and alignment.
A team charter could include:
Commitment to starting on time and keeping the meeting brief.
Agreement to stay focused on the three key questions.
A shared understanding that this is a safe space to raise blockers without fear of blame.
Keeping updates concise and relevant.
Using their Kanban Board before the meeting and using this to focus and guide their updates.
Ending each standup with a quick “thank you” or acknowledgment of progress.
Part of becoming agile is to ensure the team understands that implementing standups is a learning process and creating a collaborative environment. This will help the team to build trust and positively build team accountability. Approaching it in this way should allow for a shared commitment to delivering value, growing the team culture collectively.
References:
Agile Alliance. (n.d.). Daily stand-up meeting. Agile Alliance. https://www.agilealliance.org/glossary/standup
Kniberg, H. (2015). Scrum and XP from the trenches: How we do Scrum. C4Media. https://www.agileleanhouse.com/lib/lib/People/HenrikKniberg/ScrumAndXpFromTheTrenchesonline07-31.pdf
Mountain Goat Software. (n.d.). Daily Scrum (Standup Meeting). Mountain Goat Software. https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/meetings/daily-scrum
Schwaber, K., & Sutherland, J. (2020). The Scrum guide: The definitive guide to Scrum: The rules of the game. Scrum.org. https://scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v2020/2020-Scrum-Guide-US.pdf
Scrum.org. (n.d.). Daily Scrum: Why it matters and how to do it right. Scrum.org. https://www.scrum.org/resources/what-is-daily-scrum
Scrum.org. (n.d.). Daily Scrum: Tips and tactics. Scrum.org. https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/daily-scrum-tips-tactics
Stormboard. (n.d.). Best practices for running a daily standup meeting. Stormboard. https://stormboard.com/blog/best-practices-running-daily-standup-meeting
Team charter could also include things like you can only talk for as long as you can plank for :p like the reminder about not expecting immediate awesomeness