In technology and startup cultures, few rituals are as widely adopted and misunderstood as the daily standup meeting.
Rooted in Agile methodology, the standup was designed as a brief, focused gathering to maintain alignment, uncover blockers, and preserve momentum within cross-functional teams. The premise is simple: each participant answers three questions.
- What did I do yesterday?
- What will I do today?
- What is blocking my progress?
It’s a formula that has become embedded in tech team routines across the globe. Yet, in practice, the standup often fails to deliver on its original promise. It can become a performative gesture—a daily checkbox, rather than a meaningful dialogue. It can waste time, breed disengagement, and sometimes even create more confusion than clarity.
This recurring question—how should we run our standups?—reveals something deeper. The real challenge is not about timing, tools, or formats. It’s about whether the meeting serves its intended function.
And if it doesn’t, should it even exist?
The Illusion of Ritual
In many teams, the standup devolves into a scripted routine. People attend out of obligation. Updates are given, but seldom absorbed. What should take ten minutes stretches into thirty, or worse, into a full hour of disjointed conversation. This is not just anecdotal.
According to a 2019 report from Doodle on the cost of ineffective meetings, professionals spend on average 2 hours per week in unnecessary meetings, and ineffective daily standups are among the top culprits in tech teams. At scale, this represents millions in lost productivity.
Furthermore, a study published in the Harvard Business Review found that meetings without clear purpose or follow-up drain morale and lower team performance. Many teams begin each day with good intentions but fall into the trap of ritual for ritual’s sake. This is particularly true in startups under pressure or teams undergoing frequent change, where structure often overtakes reflection.
Before the Standup, Ask “Why”
Rather than defaulting to the traditional standup format, teams should begin by examining their environment and needs. Questions worth asking include:
- Why are we doing this meeting? Is it for coordination, connection, or visibility?
- Does this cadence reflect how our team actually works?
- What are the external pressures that shape our day-to-day operations?
- Is there psychological safety in our team to speak openly about blockers?
- Would a different structure serve us better?
When teams don’t ask these questions, they risk adopting a structure that does not reflect their reality.
In many cases, the issue is not the standup—it’s the lack of trust, clarity, or cohesiveness within the team.
Team Cohesion Over Ritual
Sometimes, the real need isn’t a standup at all. It’s cohesion.
Consider the nature of your team’s work. Are you in the midst of deep, focused development cycles? Are your engineers working independently on large features for extended periods? Are your team members in different time zones or shifting between projects? If so, the daily standup may not be the right solution.
In these environments, cohesion is built not through frequent meetings, but through deliberate connection—shared planning sessions, robust documentation, and asynchronous communication tools that don’t interrupt flow states.
In distributed teams, platforms like Slack, Notion, and Linear enable transparent updates without the need for constant verbal check-ins. For some, asynchronous standups—written updates at a fixed time—offer the same clarity without disruption. But even these are only useful if people engage with them meaningfully.
Four Alternatives Worth Considering
- Weekly Strategic Syncs Replace daily check-ins with one focused meeting per week that covers progress, priorities, and roadblocks. Include time for open discussion, planning, and recognition.
- Rotating Facilitators Rotate the meeting facilitator weekly to distribute leadership and keep the meeting fresh. This also encourages more thoughtful participation.
- Written Daily Updates with Threaded Discussion Use a Slack thread or project management tool where each person posts their update and can tag teammates for collaboration or clarification. Use reactions and comments to create two-way communication.
- Focus on Pairing, Not Reporting Instead of status meetings, encourage pairing or small group check-ins on shared work. This drives actual collaboration rather than passive observation.
Psychological Safety and Trust: The Hidden Ingredients
What makes any standup—or lack thereof—valuable is not the script but the environment. Psychological safety, a term popularized by Amy Edmondson at Harvard Business School, refers to a team climate where individuals feel safe taking interpersonal risks. In her research, teams with high psychological safety consistently outperformed others in learning, innovation, and resilience.
In such environments, the standup becomes a place for vulnerability—where blockers are admitted freely, help is offered without judgment, and conversations lead to action.
Without psychological safety, however, the standup becomes superficial. Blockers are buried. Wins are overstated.
And honest conversations happen elsewhere—if at all.
Metrics Are Not the Goal
Leaders should resist the temptation to turn standups into reporting mechanisms. A meeting should never be a substitute for trust. If the only purpose of a standup is for leadership to “know what’s happening,” then the deeper issue is a lack of transparency and shared ownership.
High-performing teams operate from shared context, not surveillance.
Standups That Work
When a standup does work, it looks different. It is brief, but meaningful. Everyone shows up prepared. The team leaves with more clarity than they came with. It fosters connection without creating friction.
Most importantly, it is continually examined and refined.
This is what high-trust teams do. They ask: Is this working for us? If not, what would?
They treat rituals as living systems—not fixed doctrines.
In Summary
The daily standup is not sacred. It is not a badge of agility, nor a guarantee of alignment. It is a tool—one of many—and like any tool, it must be wielded with intention.
In some teams, it creates clarity and cohesion. In others, it becomes background noise.
What matters most is not the format but the function. Are we building trust? Are we removing friction? Are we creating space for meaningful progress?
If the answer is no, it’s time to rethink the standup. Or abandon it altogether.
Because in the end, what your team needs may not be another meeting—it may simply be the freedom to work better, together.