The Backlog Standup

TLDR — try the Backlog Standup for faster more focused start to the day.

Background

Does your standup feel slow? The Backlog Standup followed by role-specific standups could be a solution. Different roles of the product development team have different needs around the daily standup meeting:

• Product managers need to know what’s going on with workflow items, especially if there are blockers.
• Engineers use it as a time to decide who is working on what for the day or ask for help.
• Designers use the time to update the team on major user learnings.

To address these various needs (and maybe somewhat by habit/tradition), most teams use a “circle” format. Each person goes around typically talking about what they did yesterday and today.

This format has the following issues:

• Folks tend to feel the need to talk more as a representation of their productivity
• The details raised are often not relevant to everyone

Format

The Backlog format is more work item focused. Here is how you run it:

• Pull up the backlog for everyone to see
• Ask for a comment on each work item in progress. Engineers can report “going”, “blocked”, or “done.” Blocked sometimes needs a discussion for a minute or two but can be pushed to the end
• PMs and design give any updates relevant to engineers. Key product direction changes or user learnings for example
• Finish asking, “does anyone have any stucks, blocks or helps?”
• Clap it out
• Head to product-design or engineering standup based on your role

This standup version feels relevant and snappy. No more irrelevant details. In addition, this version also has the benefit of making sure your tracking software is up-to-date. Especially in larger teams, an even slightly out-of-date backlog can lead to duplicated work. Taking care of this at standup decreases that likelihood and makes it easier for the PMs to keep a pulse on workstreams.

But what about …

• Detailed Design <-> PM Communication — pm and design host a “product standup” immediately after this one to discuss those details. Engineers head to an engineering standup. This helps keep the shared Backlog Standup free of technical details irrelevant to product and design.
• Fun Time — we typically have a few minutes for a laugh or “interesting” at the start while we are waiting for folks to arrive, giving us that sense of connection. We also schedule team bonding time at different point during the week.
• Vacation Announcements — we typically communicate those during “stucks, blocks or helps” in addition to keeping a wiki with team time off.
• Availability —we share our calendars.
• Product Roadmap Updates — we do this before our weekly planning meeting to not make standup take too long. Plus once weekly is generally sufficient.
• Detailed Design <-> Engineering Communication — Design and engineering typically run on 2 different time horizons. Most of the time engineering is focused on the day-to-day and design is focused on a week or more out. This Backlog Standup hones in on the former. We encourage other tools to keep that link strong:
• 1 — Rapport — attend and rotate hosting the Backlog Standup. You’ll hear a much shorter version of what you heard before from Engineers (no more implementation or calendar details) and you can still see how everyone is feeling.
• 2 — User Updates that Impact the Backlog for the Next 1–2 Days — definitely share that in Backlog Standup
• 3 — Fun, Interesting User Updates — share those in Backlog Standup! That is a great daily nugget and keeps the team focused on their mission to solve user problems.

Different roles have different needs. Our team has found this to be a huge improvement in making our morning. We feel more focused and have a clean, reliable backlog.