Episode 33. How to Run Daily Standup Meetings for Your Online Business
WHAT IS A DAILY STANDUP MEETING?
The scrum meeting, aka the daily stand-up, is the 15-minute meeting that comes from the Scrum project management framework.
The name “standup” is as literal as they come. It’s a meeting in which team members are encouraged to stand rather than sit and quickly provide the entire team with an update on where they are focused.
THE THREE ELEMENTS OF A GOOD DAILY STANDUP MEETING
Accomplishments: what the team member accomplished in the last 24 hrs
Goals: the main objective that the team member hopes to achieve by the end of the say
Obstacles: any questions, concerns, or roadblocks that they anticipate may get in the way of their progress
HOW THE DAILY STANDUP CAN BENEFIT YOUR ONLINE BUSINESS
Having a line of sight to accomplishments, objectives, and obstacles is an excellent thing for you as the leader for obvious reasons. Sharing this information across the entire team is also extremely beneficial as team members can start to see how the pieces of the puzzle that is your business are working together. They also may hold the solutions to each other’s obstacles or have unique perspectives to contribute.
You may be worried - how much time does something like this take? Not much!
Typically, standups last 1-minute per team member. And responding to any obstacles shouldn’t take longer than a minute or two. For example, if someone is having a tech issue… the issue shouldn’t be directly addressed during the standup. Instead, the team should work together to ensure that person receives the support they need post-call.
DELIVERY OF THE STANDUP MEETING
Live Video Standups! Remember, a daily stand up was designed as a live meeting - so streaming on a video service like Zoom is 100% best! This ensures team members will hear each other’s standup and allows for peak cross-collaboration.
Video Message Standups: Teams with dispersed members do well to do a standup via slack or whatever their primary communication channel is! I still love it when this is done via video because it keeps things personalized and engaging.
Written Message Standups: This is also an excellent option for dispersed teams that would be impossible to get on a daily live meeting. I’ll be honest, this definitely works, but typed standups are pretty darn boring! And chances are your team members will gloss over one another’s.
FREQUENCY AND OPTIONS FOR DIFFERENT TEAMS
Okay, so I’m obviously going to address the fact that this may be overkill for some teams. Maybe your team members only collectively contribute 5-10 hours per week to your business… is a daily standup necessary? Especially if we add that to full-length team meetings that could be happening weekly or a few times a month.
My advice is simple: I want you to assess this for yourself. There are no hard and fast rules - this is your business, after all.
Example of a large dispersed team of contractors:
You have a team of eight. Most team members are “in” your business on a daily basis, and there are a lot of moving parts, but they are contractors with varying schedules and other clients. Maybe a live daily standup is too much. Try to organize a slack standup instead of asking that your team members participate when they start their workday. Then, you can bring everyone together for live virtual meetings to go over strategy and company-wide concerns twice a month.
Example of a small dispersed team of contractors:
You have a team of four. Only your VA/SMM is working five days a week. The other team members usually spend five hours per week working on tasks. Okay, this could be the case where a daily standup may not be very helpful. Still, consider expanding it to one standup every Monday to set expectations for a week. Then, you can still bring the team together once per month for strategy.
My point is this: you know the complexities that exist in your team. You know the schedules, the varying hour’s team members contribute to your business, etc. Take a look at the big picture and start thinking about how you can incorporate standups to benefit your business. Open the conversation to your team members! Ask for their take on it and how you can incorporate it in a way that will improve your team’s communication and alignment without feeling overwhelming and intrusive.
