How do I Participate Effectively in a Daily Standup Meeting?

How you deliver tasks today defines how you deliver projects tomorrow.

Daily Standup meetings help you focus on winning the day. They are essential for aligning the team, driving progress, and addressing challenges. They’re not a status check for management which lowers team ownership and motivation. Rather great Daily Standups provide an opportunity to plan collaboratively, raise situational awareness and focus on achieving the team's commitments, goals, and priorities.

Here's how to contribute effectively and make the most of your team's Daily Standup meetings.

Purpose of the Meeting

The primary goals are:

1. Plan the next 24 hours. Ensure everyone knows the priorities and next steps.

2. Raise situational awareness. Share updates that enable the team to anticipate risks, make informed decisions and support each other.

3. Achieve team commitments, goals, and priorities. Align individual contributions with the larger team and business objectives to ensure progress is purposeful and targeted.

These meetings are intentionally short — 15 minutes — to encourage concise, high-value updates.

What Makes a Great Update?

A great update goes beyond "what I did yesterday and what I'll do today." It provides high-fidelity information about:

• Context: Why is this task important? How does it impact the team's commitments and goals?

• Progress: Share measurable milestones (e.g., 70% done) and progress against Service Level Expectations (SLE).

• Challenges: Highlight obstacles or blockers and describe your next steps to address them.

• Integration and Collaboration Plans: Mention dependencies or areas where you need input or assistance.

• Risks and Support: Identify potential risks and the support needed to mitigate them.

Examples of Updates

Good Update

Task: Implement User Authentication

• Context: "I'm working towards user authentication, limiting use to registered users only. This is part of the MVP release.”

• Progress: "I've completed 80% of the backend APIs, including signup, login and password reset. The front-end signup form is done and login UI is 50% complete."

• Challenges: "I'm encountering a bug with third-party login OAuth tokens. I've contacted support and will explore workarounds today. If I don't hear back by 4:30, I'll shout on Slack."

• Integration Plans: "Will need API endpoint testing from Alex later today."

• Risks: "If the OAuth bug isn't resolved by tomorrow, we may need an alternative plan."

Why This Works:

• Provides clarity and detail, enabling the team to assist proactively.

• Highlights risks, collaboration points and next steps.

• Links the work directly to team goals and commitments.

Bad Update

Task: Develop Reporting Map Interface

• "Worked on the map. It's a long burn. Will keep at it today."

Why This Fails:

• Lacks detail about progress, challenges or context.

• Offers no information for the team to assist or plan collaboratively.

• Does not connect the task to broader team goals.

Other types of unhelpful updates

Update: "I've got a meeting with the head of sales, then an architecture meeting."

Why it's unhelpful:

• Lacks helpful information that supports teamwork and progress towards goals.

• Justifying time highlights a lack of focus.

Update: "I created a report, but I’m not sure if it meets the requirements."

Why it's unhelpful:

• Lacks any context or alignment

Update: "I reviewed fifteen lines of code, corrected five typos and updated the indentation on three files."

Why it's unhelpful:

• Provides unnecessary granular information that isn't helpful in a standup.

Core Principles for Effective Participation

1. Closed-Loop Communication

Just like a handshake, by repeating back key information, we can confirm our understanding of what the other team member has said. For example:

• Speaker: "I need support with API endpoint testing."

• Receiver: "I can test the API endpoints today at 3 pm."

• Speaker: "Yes, that's perfect."

This ensures information is accurately transmitted and understood.

2. Situational Awareness

When it comes to teamwork, we need to think beyond our own teams task and share details that could affect others. For example:

• Mention upcoming risks like "server maintenance tomorrow may slow our testing."

• Alert teammates about dependencies like "the reporting map needs the backend data by Friday."

3. Achieving Team Commitments

The team is successful when they achieve their commitments. Focus updates on how your work contributes to the team's goals. For example:

• "We need to complete the map interface to keep us on track to demo the MVP by next Friday."

• "This authentication fix addresses the user feedback we received last time during review."

This keeps everyone aligned on the bigger picture and reinforces shared accountability.

4. Decision-Making and Problem-Solving

Use the meeting to surface challenges but save deep discussions for follow-ups. For instance:

• During the meeting: "I'm seeing rendering issues with the map zoom. Who's available to discuss options in a follow-up after?"

5. Leadership and Assertiveness

Encourage shared leadership by empowering everyone to voice concerns and offer solutions.

• Example: "I noticed we're falling behind on the test schedule. Bob, how can we all contribute?"

6. Teamwork and Collaboration

Great teams foster mutual support by acknowledging contributions and providing offers of help. When saying thanks, it adds more weight by adding the impact it had, for example:

• "Thanks, Maria, for fixing the backend API yesterday, it looks like you saved me a week of painful debugging."

Tips for Success

1. Prepare Beforehand: Reflect on your task's context, progress, challenges and next steps.

2. Be Concise: Stick to the format and defer deeper discussions to follow-up meetings.

3. Stay Focused: Use the Kanban board as your guide and avoid unnecessary tangents.

4. Manage the work: The purpose is to help valuable workflow to customers.

5. Stop starting start finishing: the priority is always getting the most valuable work done as expediently as possible.

Conclusion

When done well, Daily Standup meetings are a powerful tool for driving progress, building team cohesion and achieving your commitments and goals. Sharing high-fidelity updates and embracing principles like closed-loop communication and situational awareness ensures an effective meeting and increases the success of the team.

Now, over to you — what will you bring to the table tomorrow?