{"id":928,"date":"2020-03-19T07:04:20","date_gmt":"2020-03-19T07:04:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/geekbot.com\/blog\/?p=928"},"modified":"2025-08-27T12:36:46","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T12:36:46","slug":"how-to-save-time-on-daily-standup-meetings-zapier-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geekbot.com\/blog\/how-to-save-time-on-daily-standup-meetings-zapier-story\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Save Time on Daily Standup Meetings: Zapier Story"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Daily stand-ups. The cornerstone of agile methodology. In fact, 87% of agile teams employ daily stand-ups <\/a>in their day-to-day operations. And they all struggle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are 100 situations where your daily standup can go south. And then there are 100 more on top of that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Situation #1:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

An engineer shares with his team what he made throughout yesterday, and then suddenly ten people are silently listening to his passive-aggressive rumble with a project lead<\/a>. For half an hour. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Situation #2:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A customer champion gets carried away a bit, bragging how well the support team addressed the sudden flood of support tickets. 1 hour later\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Situation #… <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ok, enough. <\/em>Yes, we get it. Stand-ups are tough cookies. Yet Zapier\u2019s team<\/a> was having none of it. By simply switching from chaotic meetings to organized Geekbot asynchronous standups, they saved a lot of time, a lot of nerves, and a lot of remote life \/ balances. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But let\u2019s go through their triumph piece by piece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Short And On-Point Stand-Ups<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A typical, ideal stand-up meeting is supposed to last between 5 and 15 minutes.<\/a> It\u2019s got to be short, actionable, and all while standing up. Easy concept, but highly improbable for remote teams where people mostly work from home, while never being in the same room. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same thing was happening to Zapier. This is how Scott Williams, Zapiers\u2019 Engineering Manager recalls one of their typical stand-ups: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Engineer A: “Ok, yesterday I went to update the polling code for the Framistat service, but the bit twiddler was erroring out, so I’m blocked.”<\/em>

Engineer B: “What were you sending to the bit twiddler?”<\/em>

Engineer A: “The spine reticulator state.”<\/em>

Engineer B: “V1 or V2? What about the new permissions header?”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Five minutes pass]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Engineer C: [looking up from their phone] “Oh, Christina was working on the bit twiddler. I think she changed something.” [Christina is on another team]<\/em>

Engineer A: [holding back tears] “Ok, let’s go talk to Christina.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s just during the first five minutes. The team quickly realized how often their discussions lasted far longer than the standard 15 minute mark. Worse yet, most of these conversations were about\u2026 something. No one could actually remember what they were discussing, yet everyone was exhausted. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given that stand-up meetings<\/a> are usually held in the first part of the day, it\u2019s not hard to imagine how big of a negative impact on team\u2019s productivity those meetings had. So the first point was somehow to shorten those meetings and make them more focused. This is where Geekbot came into play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It would automatically send every team member<\/a> four questions directly into Slack, at 9 a.m.:<\/p>\n\n\n\n