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"Do we still need daily stand-ups?"
"Who else thinks stand-ups are kind of pointless?"
If you've ever asked these questions, you're not alone. Many remote and distributed teams sit through 15-minute "check-ins" that stretch much longer, interrupt deep work, and force half the team to listen to updates they don't need. When your stand-up has ten people discussing projects others don't know about while they're multitasking on something else, it's a sign the format isn't serving its purpose.
That's where asynchronous team check-ins popularly known as async standups come in. Instead of gathering everyone at the same time, teammates share updates via Slack, a stand-up bot, or short recordings when it fits their schedule. This protects focus, eliminates time-zone friction, and still keeps everyone aligned on blockers and priorities.
In this article, you'll learn what asynchronous standups are, their benefits, when to use them, and how to run async standups effectively with tools and examples.
What is Asynchronous Standup and How Does it Work?
An asynchronous standup is a type of daily scrum where your team members share their updates and blockers through written text or videos instead of joining a meeting. For most teams, it still retains the aspect of synchronous meetings where everyone shares their update at a specific time, but the updates are delivered through async tools like your messaging platform, project management software, or async standup apps.
The difference is, instead of rushing through verbal updates that half of the team is not listening to, you write down clear progress reports that show how you're making progress toward your team goals.
What Are The Benefits of Async Standups?
In 2024, researchers at Duke and Vanderbilt University conducted research titled Breaking the Flow: A Study of Interruptions During Software Engineering Activities. They found that interruptions—of which synchronous standups are one—increase the time it takes engineers to complete tasks, affecting their productivity. This is proof that shifting to async standups isn't just a trend; it is a strategic move to help your team have more time for uninterrupted work while keeping the team aligned.
If you're still wondering if you should switch to async standups, here are 7 reasons why you should:
1. Better Updates: Standups are timeboxed. Each team member has 15 seconds or less to share their updates and make room for the next person. While you may save time, this is pointless as you are repeating the information on your board. When you move to async standups, you give people the flexibility to provide high-quality updates that provide the full picture of what they are working on.
They can link to PRs, attach documents, and have more space to explain blockers clearly. All these would be difficult to do in a 15-minute live sync. Simply put, async standups allow your team members to provide more information and depth. And when you have this, you're promoting transparency, which gives everyone on the team a full understanding of the project status without needing to follow up or host a different meeting.
3. Searchable Documentation for Projects: One of the most overlooked values of async standups is how they create detailed project documentation without additional effort. If your async standup is in written form, like most teams do, every update serves as an entry that creates a knowledge base that captures and shows the progression of the project, complete with all the context.
For instance, when you use a tool like Quely for your standups, all the updates about a task are in the workspace for that task, so it's easy to see the progression of that task from start to finish. What's more, if you're using Jira as your project management tool, all the updates are tied to Jira, so that from the Jira ticket, everyone can see the updates and progress of a task.
4. Inclusive Participation: For a distributed team, one benefit of asynchronous standups and even async work in general is that it's inclusive. It allows you to accommodate global time zones without sacrificing alignment. If you're part of a distributed team, you know that it's difficult to find an optimal time that works for everyone. 9am PT might be midnight in India or in the middle of the day in European time zones when people are deep in work and don't need a distraction.
But with asynchronous standups, you eliminate this problem entirely, allowing each team member to contribute at a convenient time, still within the standup window.
5. Reduced Meeting Fatigue: We all know that most of the time, a 15-minute standup stretches to over 30 minutes. As your team grows, the probability of your standups running over becomes higher. Think of this: your team members join a supposedly 15-minute standup that runs into 45 minutes, hop off, join another post-standup call as well as all other calls they have to join throughout the day, especially if your team is heavily synchronous. Numerous studies, including one by Microsoft in 2021, show that meetings without breaks lead to cumulative mental fatigue that impacts problem-solving ability and creative thinking—both critical capabilities for software engineering teams.
This fatigue decreases focus, creativity, and ultimately, productivity. When you adopt async work, starting with your daily standups, you reduce your team's meeting overload, help them improve their energy levels and better focus during remaining meetings, and increase their enthusiasm for collaborative work.
4 Signs that You Should Switch to Async Standups
Recognizing when synchronous standups are hindering rather than helping your team requires looking beyond surface-level participation to understand the real impact on productivity and team dynamics. Here are the clear warning signs that indicate it's time to make the switch:
1. Updates Are a Repetition of What's Already in Jira or GitHub: When your updates are the same as what's in your project management tool, it is an indicator that it's time to move async. It's not worth interrupting time for deep and focused work to repeat what's already in Jira tickets or GitHub.
2. People Regularly Join Late, Leave Early, or Seem Distracted: If you notice that many people join your standups late, multitask, or are distracted, it's another sign that you have to rethink your standup format. What this shows is that most people don't find the standup engaging enough to require their full attention.
3. Important Discussions Happen After the Official Meeting Ends: If you notice that the valuable coordination and problem-solving conversations often occur in "parking lot" discussions, sidebar conversations, or follow-up meetings after the formal standup concludes, then there's no need to drag everyone into a meeting where they'll simply repeat what's already in the project board. What your focus should be is enabling your team to coordinate better and work through blockers faster.
4. Time Zone Conflicts Create Participation Inequality: When time zone differences become an issue, one thing you'd notice is that some team members consistently join at inconvenient times, participate less due to scheduling constraints, or miss meetings entirely due to time zone conflicts. You might observe that certain team members provide brief updates because they're joining late at night or early in the morning. If this is the case, then async is the best option. Remember, to get the best out of your meeting, you need everyone to participate. If time zones are hindering this, then explore another option that serves your team.
How to Conduct Async Standups
Implementing async standups is more than creating a dedicated Slack channel or signing up for a standup tool and asking your team to write their updates instead of joining a meeting. If you want async standups to really work and not just be status reports in a different channel, you need to set expectations and design a process that makes it easy to meet expectations. Here's a simple framework you can follow to conduct async standups that improve alignment.
1. Create a structure for your updates: When thinking about a structure for your updates, you want to balance comprehensiveness with efficiency. This means that you want to provide a structure that provides complete information that minimizes follow-up questions. But at the same time, you don't want to overwhelm people so that providing their update becomes such a tedious task that synchronous meetings seem like a better option. Here's how to create a standup structure that goes beyond the usual "yesterday, today, blockers" format:
- What I accomplished: This should include context about the work. Instead of "Fixed the authentication bug," encourage updates like "Resolved authentication timeout issue by implementing connection pooling. This pattern should be applied to other service connections to prevent similar issues."
- What I'm working on next: Just like the previous point, this should include priorities, expected timeline, and potential dependencies. Rather than "Working on user dashboard," your update should explain "Implementing user dashboard responsive design with focus on mobile performance. Planning to complete wireframe implementation by Thursday, then coordinate with design team for final review before development completion."
- Blockers and support needed: This section should specify what type of help is needed and from whom. Instead of generic "blocked on API," an ideal update should say "Waiting for user service API documentation update from backend team. Specifically need clarification on pagination parameters and error response format. Can proceed with UI implementation using mock data until documentation is available."
2. Establish Quality Standards with Examples: After creating a structure for your standup format, create a template that shows a high-quality update versus a low-value one. This gives your team an understanding of the level of detail that's helpful versus overwhelming.
3. Set Expectations around Timing: One of the concerns people have about async work is around response times. Most people worry that if they start communicating asynchronously, it will take more time to get the information they need. If this is your concern, establish a window for sharing updates. For example, if your async standup holds by 3:30 PM, you can create a standup window where everyone is expected to send their updates between 3:30 PM - 4 PM.
4. Create Accountability: In synchronous standups, people join the meeting at the scheduled time, but that's not the case in async standups. It relies on individual discipline and commitment. Even in high-trust teams with significant autonomy, you still need structures that ensure accountability. Accountability in this context means that everyone submits their updates within the agreed timeframe and follows the format. If you don't do this, most people won't share their updates consistently or even follow the format. This undermines the async standup. One thing you can do is create some kind of automation that sends reminders at the start of the standup window as well as at the end, reminding people who haven't submitted their updates to do so.
5. Choose the right tool: You've created a structure for your updates, set expectations around timing, and much more. Now it's time to face the big question: what's the best tool that can support our workflow? We've written a blog post where we discussed in detail the async standup tools most remote and distributed teams use. But here, we'll provide a quick summary. Here are the top 5 tools other teams are using to run their async standups:
- Slack: For many teams, Slack is the obvious choice because all communication already happens on the platform. So adding a standup channel makes perfect sense. The benefit is clear: past updates are easy to search, and integrations pull in links to tickets, pull requests, or documentation. But Slack isn't without drawbacks. Threads often become unwieldy as teams scale, and the platform's "always-on" vibe can pressure people into answering immediately, which erodes the very async nature you're trying to protect.
- Dedicated Standup Tools: If you want a tool custom-built for standups, you can choose from Geekbot, DailyBot, or Standuply. They provide customizable questions, automated scheduling, and reports you can use to identify patterns. The advantage is that everything is designed around the standup itself, making participation tracking and summaries easy.
- Project Management Platforms: Another option is to use your project management tools like Linear, Jira, or Notion. This keeps updates tied to actual tasks, making it easier to see progress in context. The catch is that project management platforms aren't built for conversation. If you want a tool that ties your updates back to your project management tool while giving you flexibility to have conversations around your updates, check out Quely.
Common Challenges of Async Standups and Their Solutions
1. Missed or Incomplete Updates
Challenge: Team members may forget, overlook, or neglect to submit their daily standup updates, undermining team transparency and coordination.
Solution: Use automated reminders to remind everyone to share their updates. Even if you're not using Slack as your standup tool, push reminders to Slack where everyone can see it and act on it.
2. Blockers Not Addressed Promptly
Challenge: Unlike in live meetings, where you can stay behind to resolve blockers, in async standups, if no one is reading the updates, important issues might go unresolved for a long time.
Solution: Encourage team members to flag blockers clearly and prompt managers to actively follow up. Another way to ensure this is not an issue for your team is to ensure everyone reads through the updates. If no one is reading the updates, then they may not know when they are needed to resolve blockers. Also, set up SLAs for when issues should be resolved.
3. Decreased Team Connection and Engagement
Challenge: Lack of face-to-face interaction can make async standups feel impersonal, reducing engagement and eroding team culture.
Solution: Build in team-building questions, encourage comments and reactions, and occasionally supplement async standups with short synchronous check-ins or virtual social sessions.
4. Poor Participation or Engagement
Challenge: It's easy to ignore notifications or feel disconnected from the standup process. Also, team members may not read each other's updates, missing important information, which defeats the purpose of the standup.
Solution: Set clear expectations about the importance of participation, make updates visible, and use engaging prompts. Use tags (like #blocker) to highlight pressing topics.
6. Inconsistent Update Quality
Challenge: Without structure, updates can be too vague or detailed, making them hard to interpret.
Solution: We touched on this in a previous section. Use a standardized template for updates and provide guidance on what details to include.
7. Time Zone Coordination
Challenge: Distributed teams may struggle with simultaneous deadlines.
Solution: Set a daily standup time that overlaps with most team members' working hours. For example, if your team spans Europe, Africa, and North America, try a window like 8am–2pm UTC, so everyone is awake and working during some part of it. Also, use an update window. Instead of a single deadline, create an "update window"—a span of several hours during which standup responses can be posted. This gives team members flexibility while ensuring updates are timely for everyone.
FAQs About Async Standups
Question 1: What is an async standup?
Answer: An async standup (asynchronous standup) is a meeting alternative where team members share updates via text, tools, or recordings instead of live calls.
Question 2: What are the benefits of asynchronous standups?
Answer: They reduce meeting fatigue, increase transparency, create documentation, and work across time zones.
Question 3: How do you run an effective async standup?
Answer: Set a structure for updates, establish quality standards, define a posting window, use reminders, and choose the right tool.
Question: What tools are best for async standups?
Answer: Slack, Geekbot, DailyBot, Standuply, Jira, Linear, and Quely are popular choices.
Key Takeaway
Async standups (asynchronous standups) are the modern replacement for draining daily scrum meetings. They protect focus, work across time zones, reduce fatigue, and build searchable documentation while keeping your team aligned and productive.
Ready to Explore Async Work? See how Quely helps you get more done with less meetings.