Daily standups.

They were supposed to be a quick, focused meeting that ensures your team is aligned on sprint goals and priorities. Instead, it has become a performative and interruptive meeting that your team dreads.

If you're a Scrum Master, engineering manager, or team lead reading this, you've probably had this feeling that your colleagues view daily standups as a chore, especially if progress is incremental. And unfortunately, that’s right. Research shows that most developers see daily scrum as many team members have a negative experience from conducting this meeting, which reduces job satisfaction, co-worker trust, and well-being.

But here's the thing: the problem isn't necessarily with standups themselves. It's with how most teams are running them. So in this article, we’ll answer the question should stop your daily standups. We will also share why most people are dissatisfied with their standups and what you can do to fix them. We’d also list alternatives to daily scrum that help your team stay aligned while fixing the shortcomings of traditional standups.

3 Reasons Why Daily Standups Fail

Most daily standups have turned into agile theatre. You’re just going through the motions but nothing meaningful comes out of it. Little wonder most of the team hates it. Here are some of the reasons developers complain about your daily standup and are secretly advocating in subreddits that you scrap them:

They are status reports: The thinking behind this is “if I am joining a meeting that runs over, where I get to repeat what’s already in the project management board, what’s the need?”. The best meetings are for brainstorming. If someone is joining a meeting to repeat what they’ve said elsewhere, it’s probably not the best use of their time.
They feel like reporting to a boss: The role of a scrum master [or anyone else who plays that role in a team] is to coach the team, remove blockers, and support continuous improvement. If your team members don’t see the scrum master in this light but instead, see them as a supervisor grading their performance, the standup feels like a ritual where everyone is trying to outperform the other.
They punish people in other time zones: According to industry surveys, most organizations have teams in multiple locations. But standup time is often not optimized to serve these teams. They are usually fixed around the manager or leadership’s time zone. We admit that the logistics of finding a time zone that works for everyone are hard. But consistently requiring team members in other time zones to join late at night or very early in the morning is not ideal.

5 Signs Your Daily Standup Isn’t Working

How do you know that you need to overhaul your current approach to your standup? If any of these happen consistently, it’s an indicator that you need to find alternatives to this daily meeting.

Every standup feels the same: If your standup feels the same every day, and nothing new or useful comes out of it, then the meeting has stopped serving its purpose.
No one addresses or fixes blockers: If everyone dutifully answers, “What did you accomplish yesterday? What will you work on today? Are there any blockers (obstacles)?”, and the blockers take some time to fix, it shows that the standup is not driving alignment as it should.
Low participation: If you notice that most people are not engaging or are multitasking during standups, it shows that no one is paying attention
The Meeting Consistently Runs Over Time: Standups are supposed to be for 15 minutes. But as your team grows, it becomes ddifficult to fit everyone's updates into these 15 minutes. If you struggle to manage this time constraint, you should explore other formats that drive alignment.
Important Information Gets Shared Elsewhere: If updates, blockers, and decisions aren’t happening in the standup at all, if they’re pushed to Slack threads, emails, private chats, or even separate meetings, the meeting may not be relevant at all

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What are The Costs of Ineffective Daily Standups?

Before we discuss solutions or even alternatives to ineffective standups, we should first ask, “What are poorly run standups really costing your team?”. Here are the answers to this question:

Productivity Drain: If your team has overlapping time zones, your standups may happen when people are deep into work. For example, your 15-minute meeting can cost 45+ minutes of productivity. This includes the time to stop what you're doing, attend the meeting, and struggle to get back into focused work.
Reduced Team Morale: When you host frequent mandatory meetings that don’t accomplish much, you drain your team's energy. It also yields the opposite of what you’re trying to build. You’d see this when they start joining late, turning cameras off, or giving the bare minimum updates. These are all signs that they don’t see the value anymore.
Poorer Communication: Ironically, ineffective standups often make communication worse. If the official meeting feels unhelpful, people move conversations elsewhere, into Slack threads, private chats, or not at all. You may not notice blockers on time, and important updates don’t reach the whole team.
Strained Relationships with Managers: If you push to keep standups that clearly aren’t working, it can create resentment. Your colleagues feel their time isn’t respected, and over time, they may lose confidence in your ability to listen and adapt. You lose trust in your team members if they feel that you don’t listen to them.

Should You Stop Daily Standups? The Honest Answer

Here's the question everyone is asking: “Should you just cancel daily standups altogether?”

The honest answer is: it depends.

Daily standups aren't inherently good or bad. They're a tool. And like any tool, their value depends entirely on how well they fit your team's needs and how well you use them.

So the question is, when should you consider stopping daily standups?

Your team already communicates effectively through asynchronous channels
Work is highly independent with minimal interdependencies
Team members work across significantly different time zones
The standup has become purely ceremonial with no practical value
Multiple attempts to improve the format have failed
Team productivity and morale are suffering

We are not advocating stopping all forms of daily standup. The suggestion is to find alternative ways to drive alignment and make progress towards your sprint goals without forcing people into performative meetings at inconvenient times.

On the other hand, most teams haven’t evolved to the extent of eliminating their daily standups. Maybe their working style makes it difficult to just do away with this daily meeting. If your team fits any of these descriptions below, keep your standup but make it better:

Your team works on tightly coupled features that require frequent coordination
Blockers and dependencies change rapidly
Team members are new to agile practices and benefit from the structure it provides
The team has expressed that they find value in daily check-ins

But at the end of the day, the best approach is to find a middle ground: Hybrid standups. Most times, the answer to should we stop our daily standups is not binary. Instead of choosing between "daily standups" or "no standups," they've created hybrid approaches that give them the benefits of a daily standup while removing the downsides. We'll discuss these alternatives in a later section below.

How to Fix Daily Standup Problems (Before You Cancel Them)

If you've decided to keep your standups, here are some ways to transform them from meaningless meetings your entire team dreads to an energizing collaborative session:

Change the Format Completely: The traditional three questions kill engagement. Stop asking "What did you do yesterday?" and start asking questions that actually matter today: "What's your biggest challenge right now, and who might be able to help?" or "What are you excited to work on today?" When you shift from status reporting to problem-solving, people start paying attention because the conversation becomes relevant to their work.
Make It Actually Interactive: Turn your standup into a conversation, not a series of monologues. When someone mentions they're stuck on API integration, immediately ask if anyone has dealt with similar issues. Set a two-minute timer for these mini problem-solving sessions to keep things moving. The difference is dramatic—instead of zoning out during others' updates, team members start listening for ways they can contribute.
Rotate Leadership: Having the same person facilitate every standup creates a parent-child dynamic that kills collaboration. Let team members take turns running the meeting. When developers facilitate, they ask different questions and create space for technical discussions that managers might skip over. This simple change transforms the meeting from "reporting to the boss" into "coordinating with teammates."
Keep It Short and Actually Stand: A 10-minute hard limit forces focus and eliminates rambling. Standing up (even at desks for remote teams) creates physical energy and prevents the meeting from dragging. Start exactly on time, even if people are missing. When team members know the meeting will be brief and energetic, they show up more engaged.
Address Time Zones Without Torturing Anyone: For distributed teams, rotate meeting times weekly so no one permanently gets the terrible slot. Record standups for those who can't attend, and use asynchronous updates when time zone differences are extreme. Remember, the goal is inclusion.
End with Energy Instead of Relief: Close each standup by highlighting one team win from yesterday, something interesting someone learned, or meaningful progress on a difficult problem. People should leave feeling more connected to their teammates and clearer about their day, not just relieved that another meeting is over.

The fundamental shift is moving from performative status updates to genuine team coordination that people actually find valuable.

Best Alternatives to Daily Standups

If fixing your current standups isn't working, or if your team's needs have evolved beyond what daily meetings can provide, here are some alternatives you can try. We’ve written a different article that covers alternatives to daily scrum you can try. But here’s a quick summary below:

Asynchronous Written Updates: Replace verbal standups with brief written updates that team members post at a designated time. Create a channel where everyone posts their focus for the day and any blockers they're facing. This removes the scheduling conflict and gives everyone on your team time to think through their updates instead of improvising on the spot.
Video Calls for Pairs or Small Groups: Instead of gathering the entire team daily, have smaller video calls between people actually working on related tasks. Two developers collaborating on a feature can sync up in a brief call, discussing technical decisions and dependencies, and then post the outcome of that meeting on your Slack channel.
Office Hours Model: Create specific times when team members can drop in for help or coordination, similar to a professor's office hours. The product owner might hold office hours every Tuesday and Thursday for clarifying requirements, while senior developers offer technical office hours on Mondays and Wednesdays. This creates predictable availability for collaboration without forcing everyone into the same meeting. People only attend when they have genuine questions. This makes every interaction purposeful.
Digital Board-Based Check-ins: Gather in a video call around your digital task board twice per week instead of daily. Focus entirely on items that are stuck, approaching deadlines, or need team input. Skip the individual updates and dive straight into problem-solving mode. When someone's task is blocked, the whole team can see it visually on screen and contribute solutions immediately. This approach eliminates status reporting while amplifying the collaborative problem-solving that standups are supposed to enable.
Slack-First Coordination: Use dedicated Slack channels for real-time coordination throughout the day instead of batching everything into one meeting. Create channels for specific purposes: #blockers for immediate help requests, #daily-focus for sharing priorities, and #wins for celebrating progress. When someone gets stuck, they post in #blockers and get help within minutes rather than waiting until tomorrow's standup. This creates continuous coordination.
Weekly Deep Dives Instead of Daily Surface Updates: Replace daily standups with longer weekly video sessions for collaboration. Spend 45 minutes reviewing progress, discussing technical challenges, and planning the upcoming week together. Between these weekly meetings, team members coordinate organically through communication platforms like Slack and their project management tools. This approach recognizes that most daily updates don't require everyone’s attention, while weekly planning sessions provide space for substantial discussions that actually influence the direction of the team.
Hybrid Approaches for Transition: If eliminating standups feels too radical, try a hybrid approach that gradually reduces dependency on daily meetings. Start with three standups per week instead of five, or alternate between video collaboration days and async communication days. Some teams designate Mondays for planning discussions and Fridays for reflection, with asynchronous coordination for the rest of the week. These transitions help teams discover what coordination they actually need versus what they think they need.

The most important principle across all alternatives is matching communication frequency to coordination needs rather than following rigid schedules that may not serve your team's specific working style and project requirements.

Frequently Asked Questions About Daily Standups

Q: Are daily standups required in Scrum?
A: Scrum guidelines recommend daily standups (or daily scrums), but they are not mandatory for every team. The purpose is alignment and transparency, so if your team achieves that through other methods, you can adapt the practice.

Q: Why do daily standups often fail?
A: Standups fail when they turn into status updates, drag on too long, or don’t resolve blockers. They can also fail when time zones make attendance unfair or when the format feels like “reporting to the boss” instead of collaborating as a team.

Q: How do I know my daily standup isn’t working?
A: Signs include repetition (same updates every day), unresolved blockers, low engagement, meetings that run long, or important updates happening elsewhere. If three or more of these are true for your team, it’s time to rethink your approach.

Q: What can I do instead of daily standups?
A: Alternatives include async written updates in Slack or tools, hybrid formats (a mix of async and sync), smaller group syncs, weekly deep dives, or using project boards and blocker channels. The key is matching communication frequency to the actual coordination needs of your team.

Q: How do you run a standup that people don’t hate?
A: Keep it short (10–15 minutes max), rotate facilitators, focus on sprint goals instead of individual updates, and actually resolve blockers. End with a team win to build energy.

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Conclusion: Your Next Steps

Daily standups fail when they become repetitive, status-driven, or unfair to distributed teams. If you keep them, make them short, collaborative, and focused on solving blockers. If not, try async standups, hybrid formats, or weekly deep dives. The goal isn’t a perfect standup—it’s effective team communication

Remember: there's no shame in admitting that your current approach isn't working. The best agile teams are the ones that continuously adapt their practices to serve their goals better.

The goal isn't perfect standups. It's effective team communication that drives results and keeps everyone engaged. Whether that happens in a daily meeting, an async channel, or something entirely different is up to you and your team to decide.