The first time I joined a team that did an asynchronous daily standup meeting — or daily Scrum — I admit I was sceptical.
The idea of not having a fixed time for checking in with everyone seemed counterintuitive (at best — at worst, maybe a recipe for chaos).
Were big updates falling through the cracks? Were people staying aligned without their regular, scheduled, synchronous interactions?
The answer turned out to be a resounding “no”. Here’s why.
Traditional vs asynchronous daily standups
The traditional standup emerged in the early 2000s and has been a go-to strategy for years.
But the realities of modern development — particularly for remote teams and distributed teams, and the flexible schedules that characterise modern software engineering teams — demand a new approach.
We don’t use tech from the early 2000s — shouldn’t our approach to building tech also be changing?
Option 1 — The asynchronous stand-up
Instead of logging in for a live meeting, team members share their updates within a dedicated platform or tool (more on this later) at a time that works for them within the day.