If you’re a manager, you know all about the dreaded standup meeting. It seems like there are always at least one or two people who show up late, spend more time on their phone than on anything else, and don’t contribute to any meaningful discussion.
But what if it turns out that those same meetings are also hurting your business? What if they’re making it less productive?
The idea behind the standup meeting is simple: everyone stands in a circle for around five minutes while each person talks about what they accomplished yesterday and what they plan to do today. What are the merits and demerits of daily standup meetings?
The Pros of Daily Standup Meetings
They force employees to take accountability for their work. The idea is that if you tell your manager what you’re planning on doing, then there’s no way that you’ll be able to slack off and not do the same things every day.
They allow for a quick check-in on the status of a project. If a teammate didn’t make it to a daily standup meeting, there’s no way that they could have been working all night on something secretive and special without anyone knowing.
Proper scheduling of the standup meetings is essential. Nowadays, using the Microsoft Teams standup bot is an option in doing the planning. With appropriate arrangements, there are fewer chances of having disruptive meetings.
They provide a snapshot of what everyone is working on. During the standup meeting, each person will go over their accomplishments from yesterday and list what they plan to do that day.
This gives everyone an idea of not just what everyone else is working on but how it might affect a planned project.
They allow for free-form updates. If you have something to say that doesn’t fit into any of those categories, it’s fine to talk about it after the meeting is done.
This kind of “broadcasting” can help people who work remotely. People who aren’t in the office can listen to what everyone else is saying. Sometimes you can even hear people talking over each other, trying to get their updates first.
The Cons of Daily Standup Meetings
They require a lot of preparation. For a standup meeting to work, everyone has to know precisely what they did yesterday and what they plan on doing today.
Otherwise, you’ll have a situation where one person has three hours of work, and the other has an entire project that they’re going to take a week to complete. The problem is that not everyone can remember all of this stuff off the top of their head.
They take a lot of time. If your meeting runs too long and you’re repeating things because people forgot what you said, it’s going to take a lot of time. It might only be ten minutes, but that’s still time that could have been spent more productively.
They don’t allow employees to take ownership of problems. If someone didn’t accomplish something they wanted to, it’s hard for them to say anything during a standup meeting.
They require your teammates to take themselves seriously. For a standup meeting to work, everyone has to be accountable for what they do throughout the entire day. Otherwise, you’re just sitting around asking people how their days were.
Standup meetings are a great way to keep your team on the same page and be more productive. However, they can also take up a lot of time if not correctly scheduled. If you want to make sure that it doesn’t disrupt any other tasks or projects you have going on at this moment in time, consider using the relevant tools for scheduling purposes.
