Daily standup
Definition
A daily standup (also called a daily Scrum) is a 15-minute time-boxed meeting held each day of the sprint where each team member shares what they completed yesterday, what they plan to do today, and any blockers in their way.
The daily standup is the highest-frequency Scrum ceremony — it happens every working day of the sprint. The name comes from the original practice of holding the meeting standing up to discourage it from running long.
The three questions:
- What did I complete since last standup?
- What do I plan to complete by next standup?
- What blockers or impediments are in my way?
The standup is for coordination, not status reporting to management. The team talks to each other, not to the Scrum Master or Product Owner. If someone raises a blocker, the standup ends and the relevant people stay to resolve it — everyone else disperses.
Key rules that teams often break:
- Same time, same place every day — consistency reduces friction.
- 15 minutes hard stop. Sidebar discussions happen after, not during.
- Blockers get surfaced, not solved in the room.
- The board (physical or digital) drives the conversation — teams that walk the board task by task rather than going person-by-person often move faster.
Many high-performing teams run standups in front of a physical task board. Cards get moved, blockers get flagged with a sticky note, and the board tells the story of the sprint. BoardSnap AI is useful after unusual standups — like mid-sprint scope changes or emergency planning — where the board gets redrawn and you need a record before it changes again.
Remote teams usually run async standups via Slack bots, but distributed teams with a physical hub often still gather one person at a board while remote members dial in.
Examples
- Dev team stands at the sprint board for 12 minutes, walking tasks left-to-right across the columns
- Engineer flags a blocker on an API dependency; PM and tech lead stay after to unblock it
- Team notices three tasks all sitting in 'In Progress' for two days — classic sign of hidden blockers
- Async standup via Slack bot for a fully remote team across three time zones
- Mid-sprint board gets redrawn after a scope change; BoardSnap captures the new layout before next standup
Related terms
Snap a daily standup. Ship its actions.
BoardSnap turns any whiteboard — including this one — into a summary and action plan.