Daily stand-ups

How to run a stand-up remotely

A quick guide for a daily (and remote) team alignment
It’s often tough to balance communication, speed, and alignment in any company — let alone remotely. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to this.
Some management styles lean towards micromanagement, while others to complete autonomy. At core of any management style, however, is the ‘standup’.

The Ingredients:

The Agenda:

The emoticon phase (5-8 min)

After the initial morning exchange of greetings, this phase is spent in silence. Why? Because you’re either jotting down your own ‘done-yesterdays’ or ‘to-do todays’, or you’re check-marking (✅) those written by other members of the team to acknowledge you’ve read them and celebrating (💪) achievements.

The Question Phase (10-15 min)

Once all the checkmarks ✅ are added, the standup meeting’s leader then asks: “Any topics, team?”
This question is aimed at everyone. It can be (a) a clarification of something someone has written, or (b) any other topic that requires input from other team members.

There is only one goal from the project manager: to ensure that priorities are set correctly and sort out any dependencies between the team members.
They will end up asking questions like: ‘Sandra, have you talked to Angela about X?’ or ‘Make sure you don’t forget to inform Mariana.‘ If any daily goal is at risk, this should be addressed or tasks re-prioritized.

The Get-on-with-it Phase (rest of day)

Go out and do your thing. The team has got this!

Workdays start at different times for everyone, depending on their location, but every workday starts the same: answering 5 questions:


How it looks like:

For the week:
  • What goals did you accomplish last week?
  • What goals didn’t you accomplish last week?
  • What are you going to accomplish this week?
  • Is there a conversation that you had last week that other team members should be aware of?
  • Other than having a larger team, is there something that could make you faster?
For the day:
  • What goals did you accomplish yesterday?
  • What goals didn’t you accomplish yesterday?
  • What are you going to accomplish today?
  • Are any of your weekly goals at risk?
  • Other than having a larger team, is there something that could make you faster?
Tip: Start a new message answering the questions ‘For the week’, then create a reply comment under your own message to start a thread where you can type the daily stand-ups.  This is how it would look: 

The cadence can be different depending on your needs.

Some teams only run video meetings for the weekly and do the other days in writing. More project-driven teams will have standups every day.


That’s how we run a standup at Voice123. Now all you need to do is make yours happen.

Have fun!