The daily stand-up is the most important meeting for agile teams, but most do it wrong or misunderstand its purpose:

• The goal of the stand-up is for the team to self organize its work and align on its daily goals in a collaborative way

• In a good stand-up, team members talk to each other and with the customer representative (usually a product manager) to clarify goals and agree on how the work will be done

• A stand-up should end when everyone has a clear idea of 1. What are the objectives of the team for the day, and 2. How is team going to work to achieve them. Really good teams also use the opportunity to form groups to pair program

• Conversely, the goal of the stand-up is NOT for status updates to (product) management. Also not for unidirectional communication between each person of the team and the (product) manager

• The ritual of the “Three stand-up Questions” (What you did yesterday?/What are you doing today?/What are my blockers?) is the absolute worst thing and the root of all problems I see with the way most teams do stand-ups. This is bad is because these questions promote an individualistic approach which do not foster collaboration

• “Yesterday, I had some meetings” is the thing I often hear that I hate the most: What you did yesterday is not important if it’s not connected with the work that the team is planning for today. When people talks this way, no one pays attention, there is no collaboration, and is a waste of time

• Ideally, a stand-up should take place at the beginning of the day, when everyone is able to attend. When working in multiple time zones, it can also serve as an opportunity to formalize handing over of work

• Asynchronous stand-ups on written form should be avoided. Remember, the purpose for a stand-up is for the team to collaborate synchronously

• Some teams like to let every person of the team speak one after another, so everyone in the team can talk in equal terms. I prefer to go through a (virtual) task board starting with the top priority work for the day, therefore focusing the conversation around the work and not around the individuals

• The role of a product manager is to remind the team of the customer priorities. The product manager’s attendance should be mandatory in immature teams/products, and is welcomed in more mature teams/products

• The role of the engineering manager is to coach the team to show a collaborative behavior and moderate the stand-up so everyone gets equal chances to talk. Of course, the more immature the team, the more important this job is

• You don’t need to “stand up” to do a good stand-up, but it sometimes help to gather around a whiteboard to visually discuss and evaluate progress, as long as you share the same physical space

• I’ve often heard that stand-ups should be kept short, which does not make sense because you want people in the team to talk more to each other, not less. As the team gels over the weeks/months and people get more confident with each other, meetings will naturally take less time. If the team finds itself in a new dynamic, it’s important not to rush it and even let it go a bit off-topic.