Remote Work Cadence #1: The Daily Standup
When you start working remotely, it can be difficult to understand what's going on with everyone in various locations (and possibly even different timezones). You need to create systems to the way that you communicate to make sure information flows to the right people at the right time.
One of the first cadences a team will adopt is the daily standup. Typically, this is a 15 minute real-time meeting that's part information sharing, part collaboration.
It's also one of our most popular cadences in Friday. This posts walks you through the benefits and how to get setup!
Who should use this?
Daily standups are a simple way to understand forward momentum and if any blockers exist. We typically see highly collaborative teams use the daily standup, especially engineering or product teams.
This fast feedback loop helps make sure projects stay on track. For other teams, you may only need to do this 2x/week, as the work isn't as collaborative.
What questions do I ask?
A daily standup typically consists of three questions:
- What did you accomplish yesterday?
- What are you working on today?
- Any blockers?
You can see how this looks in our workflow builder.
Here's another possible set of questions we like asking:
- What are you working on today?
- Any blockers?
- Do you have anything else you'd like to share?
The last question here provides a prompt to share other information that may be relevant, like if you need to step out for a bit in the afternoon for an appointment or something 😁
Who should see the responses?
Some teams will decide to only share the results amongst the team, but other teams will share more publicly across the organization. In Friday, you have complete control over who should respond, and who can see the responses.
When should this happen?
Most teams will run this cadence every weekday (Monday-Friday), but you can customize what makes the most sense for you:
Where should this happen?
If you use Slack or Teams, you can run the daily standup directly in one of these tools. You can also push the responses into a channel for maximum visibility.
Friday will send a DM to each person when it's time to give an update and if they don't respond, we'll send a friendly reminder :)
Are reporting options available?
Yup! We will automatically generate a shareable report and benchmark trends over time. You can see how this looks below:
Does this replace real-time standup meetings?
It's up to you! Worst case scenario, you can dramatically improve the efficiency of these meetings because the information has already been shared, so you can spend less time going around in a circle and more time resolving any blockers that have popped up.
Some of our customers use it to replace the meeting altogether. Internally, we use the daily standup to replace the meeting entirely, especially with a distributed team.
How can we make them more fun?
Sharing information is not necessarily the most fun activity.
At Friday, we make the daily standup a lot more fun by giving your team (if you want) the ability to send kudos to each other for a job well done. This is one of the several power-ups available and makes recognition part of your daily routine.
Where can I try this?
If you haven't created an account, you can try this daily standup cadence for free in Friday. We have a Pro plan available with extra functionality for $6/mo per employee.