When You Lead Daily Standups, What Are Your Best Techniques?
We asked product leaders how they lead daily standup activities. Here’s what they said.
By Tremis Skeete, for Product Coalition
Daily standups — the daily meetings product team members are either excited about or quietly dread. The rituals are loved and hated by product people around the globe, and it’s not the kind the activity that will go out of fashion anytime soon, so our best response is to discover ways to make these activities valuable, for everyone.
Based on experience, these are usually the topics discussed at standups:
- What work and/or research did you do yesterday?
- What work and/or research will you do today?
- Are there blockers preventing your work?
And if time permits, some of the following can be discussed, or taken offline and discussed further:
- Any user stories anyone believes they won’t be able to complete?
- Are you about to run out of work?
- Did you take note of user stories that may remain in the Sprint?
- Did you identify bugs and coordinate with engineering, etc?
- Do we need to escalate any critical issues to company leadership?
The above mentioned sounds simple enough, yet, we still find many stories online and on social media about challenges product leaders face when it comes to leading daily standups successfully.
Based on our quick surveys sent to product people, and our research online, we’ve surmised that the reasons why appear to be either technical or business domain specific, skills-based, or related to personal preferences in ways of working and interpersonal communication.
In light of this, we wanted to see if we could uncover other reasons why — by finding out exactly how various product managers lead standups.
We asked four product leaders:
“Outside of the popular tips and techniques experts recommend — what are your best strategies for how you lead daily standups?”
Below you’ll find transcripts of the conversations, which have been edited and condensed for continuity and clarity. Here’s what they’ve said, and this is what we’ve learned.
Keren Koshman, Director of Product at Darrow
Tremis: Keren, I’d like to start with your career — what does your company do, what do you do in your role, and what’s your academic background?
Keren: Well, at Darrow we develop what is regarded as a go-to platform for plaintiff lawyers that want to expand their practice. With the platform we harness AI technology to discover meritorious cases. We partner with top law firms to ensure product and customer success, and as Director of Product, I’m responsible for platform and data products. I have an Engeenering degree and have been in the Israeli tech scene for the past fifteen years, from a research and development leader, to a co-founder and CTO, to product leader.
Tremis: And when it comes to leading daily standups, what do you expect your product teams to begin with?
Keren: Begin with the market voices. Share conclusions from interviews with new customers, highlight emerging market trends, and recent moves by competitors. Each day something changes and it’s best that the team is aligned. Each team member can share an interesting thing they learned, and sometimes it might be outside of the scope of the team itself.
Tremis: Does it matter whether standups are done online or in person?
Keren: Sometimes, when times are stressful or deadlines draw near, especially for the engineers, we do the standups offline.
Tremis: And how do you manage to keep the timings of these standups to an effective duration and ensure maximum effectives?
Keren: Daily standups are only used for updates from all sides, but when it sparks a deep conversation we try to embrace it and not be too meticulous about the specific structure.
We share and embrace mistakes, openly talk about them and about how to not do them again. With daily standups, it’s about cultivating learning and growth mindsets.
Julian Dunn, Head of Product at Airtime Rewards
Tremis: Julian, what does Airtime Rewards do, and what do you do in your role as Head of Product?
Julian: At Airtime Rewards we help members collectively save over one million pounds each month on mobile bills in the UK. As Head of Product, I cover both B2C and B2B technologies. My past work experience includes working in eCommerce & health tech.
Tremis: And after everything you’ve experienced, what do you feel is the purpose of daily standups?
Julian: Standups are to ensure goals are reached by removing blockers, collaborating and working as a team. Often, standups can shift into “round the room” daily updates, which are good for keeping each other in the loop, but lose sight of the ultimate aim — to achieve delivery goals.
Tremis: That sounds like what all standups are designed to do. So what makes your daily standups successful for everyone involved?
Julian: A well-facilitated standup is one where everyone is engaged, all relevant obstacles are addressed, and the team is aligned with a shared focus on the overall delivery goals. To elaborate, here are some questions you can ask as a facilitator to maximise chances for success:
- “Is there anyone who can’t confidently explain what our sprint goal is? If so, I’ll re-iterate it so that we’re totally clear.”
- “Is anyone encountering any blockers or challenges that might need team collaboration to overcome? Let’s address them together.”
- “Is there anyone who feels their voice hasn’t been heard or has additional insights to share about our current progress or challenges?”
- “What are our biggest worries right now in relation to our sprint goal?”
- “If in x days’ time, we’ve missed our sprint goal, what do we think the reason will be? What can we do now to mitigate it?”
Tremis: These are all great questions, but I’ve rarely seen situations where every member on a given product team can answer these questions confidently. Sometimes, they can’t provide responses at all. How do you mitigate these challenges?
Julian: The art is in the balance — balance of approach and personalities.
Tremis: What does this balance look like? Could you elaborate?
Julian: Product teams have a mixture of personalities. We’ve all worked with people who love the collaboration of standups and shine in that environment, we’ve all also worked with people who say very little and the whole thing is out of their comfort zone. There’s a balance to be had in spending more time with the quieter, less confident people as a facilitator. It’s my way of creating an environment where their contributions can be as strong as the vocal ones.
Tremis: But in scenarios where you choose to create that environment, the risks of standups lasting longer than needed come into play. How do you respond to that?
Julian: As a rule, I consider thirty minute daily discussions tedious and usually a symptom of other problems in a company. In almost every workplace I’ve worked in, when this symptom persists, leadership would have no choice but to respond with efforts designed to reduce the time spent in standups. However, if the response is to turn standups into ruthless minimalist updates, important discussions and debates will be skipped over. After all, this is the time of the day when all the relevant people are together to align, unblock and communicate with each other.
Among other things, daily standups are about catering for the above mentioned, getting straight to the point in regard to tasks, whilst leaving time for just the relevant people to discuss topics further when required.
Valeria (Val) Steshenko, Growth Product Manager at Mercatus
Tremis: Val, how would you describe your career and background, and how would you explain your role at Mercatus?
Valeria: Mercatus provides e-commerce solutions and empowers regional grocers to compete with national brands. As a Growth Product Manager, I synthesize market trends and product usage data to inform roadmap and positioning decisions to drive innovation, growth, and increase revenue. I have a technical background, and throughout my career I’ve specialized in B2B and B2B2C product management and product marketing.
Tremis: And when you lead daily standups, what techniques do you use?
Valeria: There’s one tactic that I consistently rely on, and that is nudging the team to reframe the three classic questions, by rephrasing each one in the context of the sprint or product or business goal. By doing this, I create opportunites for the teams foster a collective ownership of tasks.
Tremis: Why is that important for you?
Valeria: Because it’s my main intention for sustaining the practice of daily standups. It’s useful for facilitating daily planning, to make sure that the entire team is moving in the same direction. Standups are also good for tracking meaningful progress towards agreed upon objectives. When roadblocks occur, we have the chance to do whatever is necessary to find solutions, or else these situations can fall through the cracks while getting bogged down in tasks that don’t matter in that moment.
Tremis: To make sure things don’t fall through the cracks, how do you approach these situations?
Valeria: So my main approach to leading standups is to make sure everyone thinks about the day to day tasks and roadblocks in the context of our business goals. Essentially, I prompt the team to answer “how does this task or issue relate to our sprint, or product, or business, or the goal itself?”
Tremis: What do you learn from this approach? Are there ways these tactics provide tangible results for you?
Valeria: Getting team members to think about tasks in different contexts does two things really well:
- It drives focus and prioritization, and
- It promotes team ownership and accountability by keeping our team’s end goals front and center.
The biggest value add I find in standups is it helps us as a team to see step by step how every task and decision we take on, brings us closer to delivering results.
Martin Michalik, VP of Product at Kontent.ai
Tremis: For our readers, tell us about Kontent.ai and what you do in your current role.
Martin: I’m the Vice President of Product at Kontent.ai, a leading company in the CMS tech industry. I specialize in complex content marketing operations, optimizing workflows and driving business growth. I have over eight years of experience in various product roles, with deep knowledge of B2B product management. With my deep understanding of the industry, I’ve been fortunate to drive innovation and deliver solutions that revolutionize content management using artificial intelligence.
Tremis: In daily standups, each team member may see the same challenges, but what they mean to each member is driven by so many historical, cultural, and professional references. It’s very rare to see the universal truth in how to build products. How do you go from what you observe in a particular project, particularly in a given sprint, and strive to align everyone else on the team accordingly?
Martin: I see my relationship with product teams as partnerships. Since I also have a deep idea of what it is like to be in their respective roles, these are the kinds of techniques I use when I lead standups in order to establish a shared understanding among the team:
Include a “traffic light” status on the project. Teams usually have trouble giving you a good estimate of how the project or sprint will end, but they’re pretty good at signaling when things don’t go exactly right. Using the traffic lights abstraction can give you the proper signal early, and you can see how the situation evolves.
- Red means, “High risk! We need assistance.”
- Orange means, “Something popped up, but we have it under control.”
- Green means, “Everything is on track as planned.”
Keep the eye on the biggest beast. Identify at the beginning of the project what is the most challenging task and keep reporting on it. Check status regurlarly, if solved according to plan. And check whether it’s still the biggest beast to beat.
Rotate the “project guardian” role. At each sprint select who’s going to be responsible for escalating possible issues and who’s “the owner of the sprint goal”. Make sure this person is heard during the standup. Rotate the role every sprint, because it ensures people understand what does it take to be a “sprint goal owner” and are responsible when reporting to that person. This particular practice leads to better reporting on the status.
Make sure “non-developer” roles also share their part. Daily standups sometimes are just about teams reporting progress. However, it’s also a perfect opportunity for when valuable insight can be shared — either from UX research, usability testing or from recent customer interviews.
Make sure your product teams use these opportunities to share important context, or ask whether people want to hear more detailed followup after the standup.
With daily standups, we learn more and become more enlightened.
With daily standups, the overarching objectives are to help provide details on progress, research, context, and make goals easier to achieve. They are not based on agendas set by company leadership, and this fundamental mindset arguably is in line with Leon Lederman’s, the God Particle.
What Lederman was essentially saying was, “If the universe is the answer, what is the question?” And if we want to continuously refine our understanding of our “universe” i.e. “the scope, scale and context of problems and its proposed solutions” — then with standups we can make this happen.
With daily standups, we learn more, and we become more enlightened. It’s why teams are ultimately expected to do things that expand the scope and scale of the company consciousness in regard to its capabilities.
To become a multi-faceted product team and ensure that we have valuable conversations, these are the desired outcomes; And they are key to the overarching philosophy of daily standups — and that’s what these product leaders keep in mind.
Special thanks to Jonathan Matheson and Sheila Murphy for their research and input which contributed to the development of this article.
