An alternative to the ubiquitous standup/daily/morning meeting. #scrum #projectmanagement

Almost all the software teams I've worked with have used daily standup meetings to share information about where each member of the project stands with regard to work completed, planned, or blocked. And I think standups are fantastic for this, but they have a major flaw; everyone needs to be in the same room at the same time. I currently work for a distributed, home working company that believe in working the hours that suit your creativity. Core hours are non-existent, and staff are actively encouraged to find a rhythm that works for them. For instance, one of my coworkers takes a "workout break" each afternoon, and another (now sadly moved on to pastures new) wouldn't dream of starting the day until an espresso has been drunk slowly, and with measured care. But even here the standup still exists. 9:30am every morning we all join a group Skype chat to share our updates. Yes, it flies in the face of "set your own working hours", but I can sympathise with why it's done, we all need the information. My question however, is does it need to be synchronous?

I don't think it does. And nor do Google, Facebook, Foursquare, Dispatch, and others. The idea goes by many names; Snippets, Show and Tell, etc, but the theory is broadly the same in all cases...

"Instead of reporting in at a meeting, every member of the team sends an email to everyone else with an update on their work. It's got the usual stand-up stuff: yesterday's work, today's work, and any blockers. We tend to send them as we begin to dive into the day. This means that Mike can send his update at 7am when he starts work and Nick can send his at 10:30 a.m. when he dives in. No one's flow gets broken and we can work whenever we feel most productive. Should something come up that has to be taken care of synchronously, we're on instant messenger all day. We can talk frictionlessly about what's going on. On top of this, if I ever have a question about what someone has been working on I can always glance back at their updates. No need to take notes in a stand-up or bother someone with questions, it's all right there."

I'm a CSM, and I can't see any reason why this method of checking in each morning shouldn't work for a distributed team, an asynchronous team (perhaps split by timezones), or even an everyday co-located team. But I'm keen to hear other points of view. So please, if you have an opinion, comment below or tweet me.

Picture: Clocks