Despite bringing some controversy to the scene and being seen as a waste of time or a nuisance by some, there’s no denying the importance of a daily meeting for your entire team. It can benefit your whole organization, helping you share project updates, start discussions, and engage in critical conversations with your development team, product owners, board members, remote teams, and more.
However, your teams can engage in more than one type of everyday meeting. Daily Scrum and Standup meetings are two of the most common meeting types among agile development teams, but they’re often seen as the same.
Is there a difference between the two, and if so, how will your choice between Daily Scrum vs. Standup affect your teams? Let’s find out.
Stand up meetings and daily scrum meetings are both short, regular team sync-ups aimed at increasing communication and transparency. However, they have some notable differences in their structure, purpose and use. This article will compare stand up meetings and scrum daily scrums and provide tips on when each is most applicable.
What is a Stand Up Meeting?
A stand up meeting, sometimes called a daily standup, is a short status update meeting that occurs at the same time each workday. Stand up meetings typically last 15 minutes or less.
As the name suggests, participants often literally stand up during these meetings, as this encourages brevity. Key elements include
- Quick updates – Each team member provides a high-level overview of:
- What they worked on yesterday
- What they plan to work on today
- Any blocks or impediments
- Cross-functional visibility – The varied updates provide visibility across departments, roles, and projects.
- Problem-solving prompts – Hearing blockers spurs discussion on how to remove obstacles.
- Daily cadence – Holding the stand up at the same time each day reinforces the habit and rhythm.
Overall, stand up meetings aim to:
- Sync on daily priorities – Align on urgent tasks and dependencies.
- Surface issues – Raise problems so they can be addressed quickly, before escalating.
- Facilitate collaboration – Spark conversations between colleagues who should coordinate.
The consistent short format makes stand up meetings easy to sustain as a daily habit
What is a Daily Scrum?
The daily scrum meeting originated in the agile scrum framework, commonly used in software development. It serves as a core element of scrum, with specific goals and practices.
In scrum, work is planned in short 1-4 week sprints with clear deliverables. The daily scrum provides an opportunity to inspect progress and make any needed adaptations to stay on track for the sprint.
Key aspects of the daily scrum include:
- Timeboxed to 15 minutes – This keeps the discussion brisk and focused.
- Held daily at the same time – Consistent timing creates a stable routine.
- For the development team – While others may attend, the meeting is for and by the doers.
- Focused on the sprint goal – The scope is narrow versus a general status update.
- Self-directed – The team leads the meeting without a manager running it.
- Optimizes flexibility – The team can adjust tasks to overcome obstacles.
The scrum guide outlines 3 suggested questions for each teammate to answer during the daily scrum:
- What did I complete yesterday toward the sprint goal?
- What will I work on today toward the sprint goal?
- What impediments or blocks are preventing me from making progress?
However, the daily scrum discussion can take other forms as well, as long as the focus stays on inspecting progress toward the sprint goal.
Stand Up Meetings vs. Daily Scrums
While stand up meetings and daily scrums are similar quick sync mechanisms, they have some key differences:
| Stand Up Meeting | Daily Scrum |
|---|---|
| Broad status updates across multiple projects and initiatives | Focused on a single project with a defined sprint goal |
| Participants from multiple departments and teams | Mainly development team members |
| Managers often run and use for status updates | Self-directed by team without manager oversight |
| Flexible; no fixed methodology | Structured event within the scrum framework |
| Ad-hoc topics based on latest priorities | Repeating questions tied to sprint inspection |
| Solves broader organizational issues and risks | Removes development roadblocks impacting the increment |
In essence:
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Stand up meetings offer an informal way to increase organization-wide transparency.
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Daily scrums provide a focused team sync to keep sprint execution on track.
Both meetings share the goals of facilitating communication, visibility, and collaboration. But their scope and level of structure differ significantly.
When Are Stand Up Meetings Most Useful?
Stand up meetings are versatile and easy to adopt. They work well when:
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Communication across teams is fragmented – Stand ups share information between silos.
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Work lacks alignment – The meeting coordinates disparate efforts and priorities.
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Managers need increased visibility – It provides top-down and bottom-up transparency.
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Ad-hoc collaboration is needed – Quick conversations can spark collaboration.
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Work is not project-based – Stand ups accommodate ongoing operations without fixed endpoints.
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Problems should be raised quickly – Rapid surfacing of issues enables quick solutions.
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Team morale needs a boost – The regular connection can build trust and belonging.
Overall, stand up meetings help strengthen alignment, visibility, and rapport across an organization. They are lightweight and flexible.
When Are Daily Scrums Most Helpful?
Daily scrums shine when:
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Work is complex with interdependencies – Scrums coordinate intricate deliverables.
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Projects require close collaboration – Sharing impediments builds teamwork.
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Work has concrete measurable goals – Scrums focus on tangible outcomes.
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Priorities are rapidly changing – The team can adapt priorities each day.
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Teams are co-located – proximity enables fluid conversations.
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Agile methodology is being used – Scrums enable iterative delivery and inspection.
Tips for Productive Stand Ups and Daily Scrums
Some best practices to maximize the value of both meeting types include:
Keep it brief and start on time – Enforce the 15 minute limit.
Have attendees prepare – Ask them to gather thoughts in advance.
Stay focused – Discourage tangents and detailed discussions; schedule separate meetings to dive deeper if needed.
** Rotate facilitation** – Self-management increases engagement and shared ownership.
Visually track action items – Log the blocks and collaborations discussed to ensure follow-up.
Timebox problem-solving – If issues arise, agree on next steps within the allotted window.
Iterate on the format – Seek regular feedback from the team on how to improve the meeting.
Model behaviors – Leaders should demonstrate how to give quality updates and actively listen.
Combine with digital channels – Maintain transparency between meetings via instant messaging or project management software.
Adopting Hybrid Approaches
While stand up meetings and daily scrums have distinct characteristics, teams can blend aspects of both to meet their specific needs:
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A stand up could borrow the 3 daily scrum questions to bring more structure.
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Scrums may include some higher-level organizational updates relevant to the team.
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Remote teams could run asynchronous stand up meetings via discussion channels.
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Co-located scrum teams might find value in standing up.
Look at your team’s unique situation and challenges to determine if a pure stand up or scrum model – or a hybrid – will be most effective.
Facilitating Seamless Teamwork
In today’s complex, fast-paced work environment, teams cannot afford siloed efforts and lack of transparency. Short daily sync meetings provide a regular pulse-check to surface impediments, spark collaboration, and keep everyone marching to the same beat.
While stand up meetings and daily scrums have distinct origins and formats, their shared purpose is connecting teams to the bigger picture so they can continuously coordinate and adjust on the fly. Both meetings can boost team cohesion, focus, and productivity when executed thoughtfully.
At their best, stand ups and scrums strike the perfect balance between brevity and meaningful dialogue. They build trust and accountability across teams by sharing just enough context to inform priorities without getting lost in the weeds.
Keeping stand up meetings and scrums positive, solution-focused sprints allow organizations to spot warning signs early and course-correct quickly. They enable transparency and collective insight that would be difficult to achieve through more sporadic or siloed communication.
With some trial and error, teams can develop efficient daily sync rhythms that help employees start each day informed, aligned, and empowered to overcome roadblocks. A little standing up and sharing goes a long way when it comes to proactive project management.
Goals and objectives
The goals and objectives of Daily Scrum vs. Standup meetings are quite different.
On the one hand, we have the Daily Scrum, which aims to minimize the need for other meetings or distractions that would pull the developers’ attention away from the primary task. The goal is to help developers deliver value throughout their Sprints.
On the other hand, we have Standups, whose goal is to enable managers and other superiors to examine if a project is progressing as expected.
By now, the topics discussed at Daily Scrum meetings should be pretty straightforward. In Scrum meetings, every participant is to review the Sprints completed the day before, the plan for today, and obstacles that may hinder their performance. That’s it.
In Standups, topics can vary greatly. The meeting leader might make room for an opportunity among team members to discuss their obstacles and the challenges they face. They might introduce new procedures, ask for updates on active projects, or provide summaries of the overall progress. Though everyone is encouraged, only some meeting attendees are required to speak.
Scrum and Daily Standup questions and processes
Until recently, the template for the Daily Scrum always included three standup questions:
- What did you do yesterday?
- What will you do today?
- Is anything blocking your progress?
The idea was that these questions would help eliminate Sprint backlog by providing a clear overview of the task board and having all team members aware of processes finished so far, the goals for the following day, and the problems that could be getting in the way.
However, the 2020 Scrum guide no longer contains these questions. Development teams are now encouraged to use any questions, structures, and techniques they want—provided the focus is still on progressing with the Sprint goal and creating an actionable plan and approach to product development for the following workday.
On the other hand, Daily Standups usually have a predetermined set of questions and processes that must be followed through. While participants can pose an alternative Standup question or two, the point of these meetings is to be concise, so most attendees prefer to stick to what they have planned.
YDS: The Difference Between a Daily Standup and Daily Scrum
What is the difference between a daily scrum and a standup meeting?
The daily Scrum occurs every workday so the team can eliminate blockers and kickstart their development work. In contrast, a standup meeting is scheduled daily, weekly or even intermittently depending upon the organization’s needs. 7. The location of the daily Scrum
What is a scrum master & a daily stand-up?
The scrum master can help encourage self-organization by discouraging team members from talking directly at them, status update style. Daily stand-up, as the name suggests, is a daily status meeting among all members of the team. It is a similar meeting to the daily scrum, without the constraints & guidance of the Scrum guide.
What is a daily stand-up meeting?
Daily stand-up, as the name suggests, is a daily status meeting among all members of the team. It is a similar meeting to the daily scrum, without the constraints & guidance of the Scrum guide. During daily stand-up team usually review what has been completed, upcoming work, issues, coordinate hand-offs and discuss common problems.
How long is a daily scrum?
A daily scrum is 15 minutes or less. While there are no strict requirements for a stand-up meeting, this type of gathering also tends to be short. Stand-up meetings rely on leaders to keep participants focused, while the daily scrum depends on team members being self-sufficient.
