
Ask HN: Does anyone use online standup tools? - priitmaxx
Was curious if anyone had experience&#x2F;thoughts on online standup tools. I am debating if I should move our team from a typical standup to an online one. I see benefits being, people put more thought into the standup report. Sometimes I see engineers showing up to the standup and having to remember and plan on the go.
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rorygibson
I've previously run with a #standup channel in Slack for distributed teams,
where everyone makes sure there's an update in-channel at 0900 GMT of what
they did in the preceding time they worked.

Plus an #achievements channel where you make a note of anything you did that
was significant (I've also heard this called #whathappened)

I'm doing some consulting on the side (while starting
[https://getctx.io](https://getctx.io)) and at this client we have a daily
physical standup with a video call on Zoom, plus #achievements in Slack.

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priitmaxx
nice. Does everyone in the team follow the protocol and like it?

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rorygibson
Yeah it works quite well. As usual, the biggest problems are with video and
mics in meeting rooms with bad acoustics. Everything else is good.

#achievements works especially well because it gives a persistent, short-form
log that people can read quickly when they come back from days off, for
instance.

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kdahlhaus
We minimized that problem by using a free app on a smart-phone that turned it
into a microphone for the PC running the Skype call. Team members in the room
would pass the phone around.

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k__
I found stand-ups problematic.

Often they are introduced, because...

...some higher ups have the feeling things aren't going their way.

OR

...some people aren't available for questions somehow and you want to pin them
down for at least 10min a day to get some information out of them.

In both cases the stand-up is just a band-aid for deeper issues like missing
or broken processes, Miscommunication or simple that no-one cares enough to
talk to each other anymore.

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yawz
Just like anything else, I've seen them done well, but also badly. My current
stand-ups last probably 10 mins (never more than 15 mins). It generates
questions and discussions that are carried out after the stand-up with a more
focused group.

If you aim for "transparency" in your process and company culture, I think
stand-ups are not intimidating and are not waste of time.

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k__
I don't think that talking with groups on a regular basis is a bad idea.

I just think, if such things have to happen synchronously every day, something
is going wrong.

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noarchy
Google Hangouts is what my past few teams have used. Wanting people to put
"more thought" into their standup report, however, may be a red flag. An
update during standup _should_ be brief, and not result in the standup
dragging on and on. No one wants to be there any longer than necessary, and if
anything specific needs to be discussed, set aside time for that topic and
only for the parties that need to be involved.

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priitmaxx
agreed, may be more "thought" is not the right word. But have you been in
situations when engineers show up and they are struggling to remember what
they did yesterday?

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noarchy
That may be an argument for using a feature or ticket tracking system. If
you've been assigned a feature (or "story", if you prefer) or a bug, there
should never be a mystery as to what you're working on. And if you somehow
forgot, a quick check would confirm what you were doing... in theory.

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wozmirek
We're using geekbot for asynchronous daily standups and it works really well,
I love it. Fixes the notes problem as well, I check the standup notes when I'm
wondering what I planned to do for today ;)

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MrMiracle
Agreed, we use geekbot as well. Our team is very distributed and asynchronous
and it makes figuring out what everyone is up to and who needs a hand pretty
easy. Also it helps going back through the channel to figure out what I was
working on all week.

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lflux
My previous team was distributed (SF, TX, NY) used Geekbot in slack for
standups, 9:30am local time it would prompt you to enter what you did
yesterday, what you'll be working today and any blockers.

Geekbot worked good when people put thought into their reports, which was far
from always - a lot of the time it'd be "yesterday: wrote code. today: will
write code. blockers: everything is awful" which isn't hugely helpful for team
synchronisation. That said, it was a lot better than when we tried using
hangouts. With Hangouts we kept running into issues like: not socially
acceptable for video conferences at desks in the SF office, and the SF people
being in a conference room felt a lot more distant than the remotes on their
PCs.

Current team is also distributed (same timezones as previous), but we do a
highly structured standup in video conference where everyone is on equal
footing signed on a workstation (instead of half being in a conf room).

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priitmaxx
yup, I see a consensus around hangout and some structure. But for remote teams
looks like a tool like geekbot would work.

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coleca
We have used Hangouts forever but just started switching to using Slack video
calls in a #standup room. The audio and video quality on Slack far exceeds
what you get on Google Hangouts. Although we do miss being able to manually
dial in a participant that happens to be somewhere that has a spotty data
connection. Slack doesn't perform very well in situations where the mobile
data is sketchy.

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priitmaxx
cool

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zamalek
I've used a few in combination with conf calls by virtue of being on a few
teams with remote workers. In those scenarios they are invaluable. I've never
used them when the entire team is in the same room so can't vouch for that.

> Sometimes I see engineers showing up to the standup and having to remember
> and plan on the go.

Standups are not "iceberg meetings." By having the team prepare for the
standup all week you might be discussing things that have been organically
solved, or that aren't pertinent to you or the rest of the team. If you care
enough about something, you'll remember to bring it up during standup. If you
take the old-school 2 hour Monday morning status meeting and call it a standup
then you aren't doing standups.

If you need that thorough 2 hour status meeting, abandon agile. Don't put your
engineers through the hell of reporting to two status update workflows.

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priitmaxx
Good point. The point is not to prepare for the standup but be ready. WHat I
mean is, in order for the standup to be efficient, engineers need to remember
and be a little more organized in their thoughts for the benefit of others and
making the standup more meaningful for the team.

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nyconyco
I used this timer: "Scrum Chatter", so that we have an equivalent time to
speak...
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ca.rmen.androi...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ca.rmen.android.scrumchatter)

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priitmaxx
oh wow. someone manages the on and off of this app?

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kcoleman731
We built a tool to solve this exact problem called Standup.
[https://getstandup.com/](https://getstandup.com/). It produces daily progress
reports for your engineering team by scanning git data.

We put our reports up the big screen every day during our in person Standups.
Every engineer quickly runs through their work items and it definitely
eliminates the whole "having to remember and plan on the go".

As a manager, I also love how it helps me catch up on my teams progress every
evening as well.

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taylorhalliday
This product is awesome. We use it every day. Excited to watch it as it grows
and gets more features!

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hkchad
We mostly dialin using Zoom, when we can't do the dial in (1-2x/week) the team
uses the /standup bot for hipchat. [https://blog.hipchat.com/2015/08/20/meet-
standup-bot/](https://blog.hipchat.com/2015/08/20/meet-standup-bot/)

It's also a team requirement that if for some reason a member cannot make the
standup call they record their status in /standup

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matthewmueller
I built Standup Jack (standupjack.com) to give you a chance to think
thoughtfully about your current and upcoming tasks before sharing them with
your team.

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dengar007
I like [https://tatsu.io](https://tatsu.io) for slack standup meetings.

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priitmaxx
oh wow, thats a new one. I am going to check this out. I like the idea that it
is in a channel and not a bot directly.

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jamiewright
Thank you!

I am the developer behind Tatsu. Please feel free to reach out if you have any
questions or email support @.

We are working on the ability to use both the bot and the channel standups,
FWIW.

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lagadu
Our team uses skype for business for our standup. We're spread all around
Europe so we don't have the choice of an in-person meeting.

In my opinion they tend to take a little longer than a traditional standup but
we do go more in depth when discussing issues we might be having. Usually it
takes 15 minutes.

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priitmaxx
Ours too. They end up being a little longer than I wish they were. Have you
guys tried any kind of online tools for this? or would you keep preferring
Skype? Something like jell.com

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lagadu
We haven't, it's working well for us that the need never became apparent.

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phumbe
I lead a student group. Have a Standuply report setup to run once a week on
Slack. Also have Trello. Adoption of both has been tepid. I like the premise
of Standuply: the bot interviews everyone (you define the questions) and then
publishes a report of all the responses (or lack thereof).

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priitmaxx
Adoption is what I am curious about. Our teams love the physical presence or
on video..

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phumbe
I think adoption has been poor because the pace of work has been slow, even
though it shouldn't be -- Trello shows lots to work on. The team isn't afraid
to share their accomplishments and thoughts. But they haven't been taking on
tasks by their own volition.

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andyjohnson0
As a team we use Hangouts for daily standups and it seems to work well for us.
I work 40% remote and another team member is 100% remote. Screen sharing for
Jira works, although we usually just do straight video.

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dylanz
Slack channel for small teams and
[https://idonethis.com](https://idonethis.com) for larger teams.

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nikentic
We use Geekbot for Slack and it's pretty neat!

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priitmaxx
Would you think they could improve on something? or its just what you need?

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errorfry
We subsidise our physical / video standup with statushero.com. It definitely
helps with engineer engagement!

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priitmaxx
interesting.. it looks intimidating.... we already have a process in place..
one more tool might be a little too much for us..

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dazsnow
We use standuply on slack. The team size is ~12 people. About half use it
every day. Very useful.

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nwatson
At current job we use a "standup" Slack channel in my group, works well
enough.

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paloaltokid
Zoom works well!

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samstave
Google Hangouts.

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darkblackcorner
I've seen them being used, eg. the /standup command in hipchat, but not a huge
fan. Obviously Skype or similar for remote teams.

TBH I always think of standups as being as informal and brief as possible, and
physical interaction promotes better comms within the team.

If it's causing real problems, why not suggest a low-tech solution like
keeping notes?

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priitmaxx
exactly, its not the problems I am worried about. I do think engineers coming
to the standup with some thoughts just make the standup exponentially more
useful. Totally agree with the informal-ness

