Stand-up meetings are short meetings lasting anywhere from 5-15 minutes and take the place of traditional, longer meetings. Team members remain standing as a reminder that this is a quick, boots-on-the-ground-type meeting and to keep everyone on point.
Research backs the idea of these meetings up. Stand-up meetings are shown to:
Reduce meeting time. Stand-up meetings reduce meeting time by 34 percent, a data point taken from a University of Missouri study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology.
Boost productivity. Researchers at Washington University, in St. Louis, Missouri, reported that “groups working together on a project while standing are measurably more engaged and less territorial than while seated,” Reuters Health reported in 2014.
For these reasons, the Stand-up Meeting has spread far beyond software development. They also led Cynthia Husek, vice chancellor for performative improvements at the University of Colorado, to switch to Stand-up Meetings for the Office of Contracts and Grants in 2013:
“In addition to consistent, high quality information sharing, the format contributes toward building community and organizational pride. These standup meetings foster professionalism, collegiality and personal development by providing a wide variety of opportunities for each staff member to contribute individually or as part of a team. The only rule is to respect the 15 minutes.”
The meetings covered topics from complex federal regulations to keeping the lunch room clean, Husek reported, and teams decided the agenda and how to run their meeting— within the 15-minute timeframe.
The main points a Stand-up Meeting should include the following:
A timeline check.
A project status report.
A review of the project goals.
Stand-up Meetings work remotely, too!
Global Workplace Analytics estimates that 25-30% of the workforce work from home post-pandemic.
With minor adjustments, remote teams can accomplish more and more efficiently using Stand-up Meetings as they did in the office. A standard agenda would look like this:
What each team member accomplished in the past week.
A status report of what they’re currently working on.
Whether any problems have occurred, and if they need help.
Meeting guidelines should include:
An assigned meeting leader.
Topics discussed should affect everyone attending.
Know your meeting goals before it starts.
Don’t forget to listen!
Boost Midwest has found Stand-up Meetings to be an effective tool to know which team members and clients are leading projects as well as the project’s status.
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