Are you getting ready for your next standup meeting?
Can I ask you a few questions?
In case you've been doubting their role, you are not alone. This is because chances are you too still follow the traditional method of standup meetings.
But what's wrong with them, you ask? Read below to find out.
Picture your daily stand-ups: how do they start, how do they pan out, and how do they end? Done?
Now, go through these points below. See if they seem familiar.
"Who begins sharing the update during a stand-up? Who goes next?" These are the questions that run through everyone's mind at the start of every traditional stand-up, physical or virtual. This is usually the result of a lack of a facilitator and the consequent confusion of team members about the order in which they should speak. The awkward silences use up precious time that could have been better spent otherwise.
So, you are done sharing your progress and getting back to the task. So have others. Now nobody knows if everyone is done sharing their progress because nobody paid attention. Consequently, all are now wondering if there are still people left to share their updates. And the awkward silence follows.
Even if everyone is aware that everyone has shared their updates, the absence of a designated manager makes it uncertain about what to do next and when to end the call.
Are you the punctual person who joins stand-up meetings on time and has to wait for others, or are you the one who joins late and makes everybody else wait? Whichever way you see it, issues with punctuality in traditional stand-ups waste time that could have been used more productively.
Are you always listening to what your teammates have to say during a standup, or are you busy with a different task and waiting your turn? Do you think your teammates also listen to you when you are sharing your progress, or is it only your team leader who pays attention?
This is the case with most traditional stand-up meetings. People hardly ever listen to others speak. It is because of this that many see daily stand-ups as a task to be done rather than something to be meaningfully engaged in.
Let's say you want to go back to a date to check and follow the progress of a task until today. Is there a way you can do that? No, right?
Another disadvantage with traditional stand-up meetings is that nobody notes down the minutes of these meetings, and therefore there is no way to track the progress of a task or any other data that may be required later on.
So, you have a team comprising the best of the best, sourced from around the world. And there is a virtual stand-up meeting that requires all of them to be present at the same time. Something sounds amiss, right?
Bet you got it. It can be truly difficult for people working from different time zones to attend stand-ups at a designated time with others, even if it is from the comfort of their homes.
How many times have your daily stand-up meetings run beyond 15 minutes because someone started a discussion on a topic that is not meant to be discussed in this meeting? Or, let's rephrase this: how many times has one teammate or the other flagged the start of a discussion that is meant to be kept for another meeting and not a stand-up? Quite a few times?
Do you see how physical or virtual stand-up meetings run the risk of deviating from the agenda, which inevitably lengthens the stand-up?
So many issues! But all of them have one solution: automated daily standups.
Automated daily standups are a great alternative to traditional daily standups. That is, if you want to run one that is actually meaningful and adds value rather than taking it away. Want to know how? Let's check below.
When you automate your daily standups, you solve the challenges related to the time zone in the case of virtual meetings and logistics in the case of physical meetings. This is because automated daily standups do not require you to ‘attend’ a meeting in real-time. You can simply respond to the standup questions in text on messaging platforms like Slack from the convenience of your laptop or phone.
Imagine being able to respond to the three standup meeting questions using your phone or laptop via text:
What did you do yesterday?
What will you do today?
Any blockers?
How much time will it take you? Hardly a minute, right? You can then use the rest of the 14 minutes to focus on your work at hand.
With automation comes the ability to store data. And with the information and data that are stored every day and available when required, teams can identify patterns and chalk out plans for better productivity.
So, say you want an understanding of how long a task will take to complete. If a teammate was assigned a similar task that was completed, you can retrieve the data from the automated daily standups to check the duration it took to complete. This will help you create effective goals for your team.
Automated daily standups can be run with teams of varying strengths. This is because, with automation, there is no requirement to gather together physically or virtually. You only need a common company messaging platform like Slack or Microsoft Teams. This eliminates the problem of longer standup meetings that would come with scaling teams. No matter the strength of your team, you will always spend only a minute responding to the three standup questions.
You now know the disadvantages of a traditional stand-up meeting and the alternative to it. But do you know the best alternative?
Allow us to let you in on a secret: Sup Bot, a standup bot for asynchronous meetings that offers you its features starting at flat $19 per month for the entire team. Why is it the best out there? Here you go.
The daily stand-ups from Sup allow you to set the timezone of your follow-up to the user's timezone. This helps companies that have team members working from around the globe.
This is so because it allows team members to respond to the stand-ups at the scheduled slot, but at their local time. This eventually eliminates the inconvenience of attending stand-ups at a designated time that may not be suitable for all remote members working from different time zones.
Sup allows you to choose from two options for your preferred interaction type: a dialog window and a conversational type. They both allow specific conveniences as per your needs.
You can choose to try out both interaction types with different follow-ups and then decide on the one that suits your individual team requirements.
Sup lets you view data and analytics through its stats section, where you can find important insights. These insights can go a long way towards making important decisions about things like project timelines and project participants.
For example, it helps you identify the days when your team is in the highest and lowest of spirits. This information is helpful to identify the days they are likely to be most and least productive, respectively. So, you can either set deadlines accordingly or do something to ensure that the least productive days do not impact the deadlines negatively.
Additionally, the graphical illustration for the stand-up participants with the highest number of submissions helps you identify individuals who can be trusted to work with transparency and accountability.
Sup also lets you view all this data for a number of periods: the current week, the past week, the current month, and even the past month.
The complete standup bot also allows you to integrate a mood-tracking feature with your daily standups. This feature allows you to monitor your team's vigour and check if there is a slump. The best part? The responses are submitted anonymously, so you are unlikely to receive any misleading data.
You can even choose to schedule the responses to your automated daily standup at a specific time and view them in a thread on Slack instead of in separate messages. This enables you to go through everyone’s plan for the day, their progress and blockers at a glance.
Sup gives you the opportunity to automatically generate and receive a summary of your daily standup for the day, 2 hours after the scheduled time. You will be able to view information on members on leave, members yet to submit standup responses, total responses submitted, and the average mood for the day. You will be able to view more details using the 'view follow-up' and 'view insights' buttons.
So, say a team member has not yet submitted their response to the daily standup, even after reminders from the bot. You can also send reminders to each team member individually to ensure that they do end up submitting the responses for the follow-up.
What a multitasker!
The need for automation is imperative. The more you delay, the more time you waste. And the more time you waste, the more likely you are to miss out on the efficiency that automation provides other teams with. So, why wait? Get, set, Sup Bot!
