What is a Stand-up?

15 November 2022

Stand-up

What is a Stand-up?: A plain and boring answer

If you are reading this, then you are at least somewhat familiar with the world of organizational productivity. You have waded through the metaphorical swamp of methods, tools and tips, or at least dipped your toes in after hearing all kinds of buzzwords flung around the workplace. 

Among those concepts, there is one called ‘the stand-up’. However, you might also know it as the scrum meeting, daily scrum, daily huddle, or by any other moniker. And to complicate matters further, it is incorporated by multiple quality and work structures that each hold varying interpretations of what it is exactly. This begs the question – what is a stand-up really?


The answer is actually quite simple. All of the aforementioned titles are variations of the same thing. A thing that doesn’t really have a standardized name, but could be summarized by a rather dry and slightly lengthy description:

Stand-up; a brief team communication meeting in which a predetermined set of topics is discussed in order to help achieve overarching team and organizational goals, promote team synergy and optimize productivity, usually held while the participants are standing.”

Not very catchy, but this definition is more than enough to take us out of the jungle of jargon and into a more neutral perspective, without having to adhere to any of the existing dogmas.

Objectives and topics

Dogma might be a bit too harsh a term actually – it is simply that the structure in which you apply the stand-up determines the overarching objectives of the stand-up and consequently the topics to be discussed during the stand-up. 

Lean Six Sigma
For example, a Lean Six Sigma Stand-Up, without going into technical detail, is designed to have a team discussing waste and blocking issues, and gathering potential inputs for improvement projects. All from a customer value perspective. Within this context, it is primarily a process improvement tool, as your goal is to optimize processes to deliver maximum value for the customer and minimize any wasteful process steps.

Agile Scrum
But when placed within the context of Scrum, you might instead call it a Daily Scrum or Huddle, and you will be focusing on blocking issues within your Sprint, and communicating around the progress of specific User Stories. Within this context, it is a progress and planning tool in addition to a communication tool, as your objective is that everyone is able to comfortably work on the Sprint’s predetermined workload, and that information regarding User Stories and their progress is shared with the relevant parties, without omission of important details.

Shared characteristics – the essence of a stand-up

In both examples, communication is central, and your goal is to keep the meeting short and to the point. These meetings are usually held standing for the reasons that it keeps people active, and motivated to keep it brief. But aside from that, the topics to be discussed are determined by the context in which it is used and the overarching objectives that come with it.

So to recap, a stand-up is a team meeting that is (usually) held standing, kept brief and to the point, is held on a regular (often daily) basis and revolves around a standardized set of topics. These topics are discussed in order to improve team efficiency and productivity towards overarching objectives that are determined by the context for which the stand-up is being used.

Whether you call it a daily stand-up, daily scrum, daily huddle, or anything else, is up to you entirely. At worst, existing structures might dogmatically claim a monopoly on this meeting format, or at best offer perspective and suggestions on how to use it within their structure – but the truth remains that it is what you make of it. And so long as you make it work for you and your team, that’s absolutely fine.

Read more – other articles you might find useful

If you’d like to read more on how we at TPC use stand-ups, take a look at our follow-up article ‘Doing stand-ups: The TPC way’.

Or if you’d like our general tips and recommendations about how to adopt and adapt the tool for yourself, check out our other article ‘How to make the stand-up your own’.

And as always, if you have questions, suggestions or comments, make sure to contact us at info@tpc.education. 

New ideas in your inbox? 

Get the scoop on new courses, offers and general tips on how to be more productive. Don’t worry, we won’t spam you silly. That obtrusive marketing stuff doesn’t work anyway.

Subscribe