What’s the Best Time for a Daily Standup Meeting?
@June 19, 2023
No matter what you’ll read here, the ideal time for a daily standup is entirely dependent on your team and workflow! However, here are some considerations, experiences we made and suggestions to discuss with your team. No matter what time, we absolutely recommend a daily standup for all teams and we do strongly recommend that the daily standup is to be considered as important and strategic meeting for all team members and exemptions to be granted only sparingly. If the meeting attendance starts dropping, consider involving the team on how to add further value to the standup.
This blog post is mostly about the timing and we’ll keep the content of a standup meeting for a separate blog post.
World Clock for Distributed Teams
We provide world reference times as a reference for distributed teams. Be aware of different daylight saving changes. For international readers and teams distributed across the globe, the article is written from an American perspective.
Mid-morning Standup Meeting at 10am
Our experience shows that most teams we interacted with had a meeting slot at the beginning of the day, some (fixed) time between 9:30am and 10:30am when even most of the IT crowd can be expected to be present. Early birds will already have achieve a significant portion of their work while others are still working on regulating their caffeine levels.
- The obvious upsides: creates a common start into the day and people are less likely to be interrupted in their work later during the day. Obviously this does not apply to anyone that arrives before the standup which is likely to happen in even just medium sized teams.
- Downside: people need to come prepared. Some prep time ahead or cheat sheet to remember the previous day. This is often facilitated by a Scrum Master or designated Master of Ceremony.
In our observation this scenario seems quite well adapted to remote or hybrid teams, and to teams spread over close time zones.
Early morning Standup Meeting at 8:30am
The early morning standup works best when the company sets the clock-in time.
- Upsides: more likely to be the start of the day for most.
- Downsides: in practice, someone is always late
Works best for teams with participants in Europe. Then, the earlier the better since it’s already their late afternoon or evening.
Midday Standup Meeting at 11:30am or 1:30pm
Rather uncommon but may be a worth a try if people are used to working very late and thus aren’t expected to be in early.
- Upsides: even the last one out the previous night will be likely to attend
- Downsides: timing may be inconvenient with respect to other meetings as it creates a tear in the day’s availability. Rather than a 2pm it usually works best right before or after lunch for teams with common lunch breaks. Ensure that the meeting is thoroughly time-boxed such that participants have the option for lunch breaks with people outside of the team.
End of Day Standup Meeting at 4pm
Not very common but definitely an option if people are likely to be around towards the end of the day (3-4:30pm).
- Upsides: Best progress reports as memory is still fresh.
- Downsides: Making plans for the next day doesn’t seem to work as well as same-day plans due to unexpected circumstances. Late meetings force early birds to stick around. In our experience, it seems more likely for people to have to leave early than for them to arrive late.
This time slot may work well for teams split into the Asian continent. Then, the later the better as it may not be 8am yet and at least in Korea and Japan, projects are often finished in the late evenings and nights and people do not leave before their boss.
Not recommended: flexible Standup Meeting Time
Some teams schedule the next standup time as part of the standup meeting. We do not recommend this practice as it leads to low attendance / low commitment and thus a meeting that does not serve its informational purpose.