I discovered stand ups two weeks before the first lockdown and found it stressful and inefficient.<p>I needed to interrupt any task I was doing (I'm usually early, and the standup often happens at a time my focus is best), or rush to arrive on time if I was ever late, listen to people in a state not necessarily fit for listening correctly, at a speed that is sometimes too high, sometimes too low, not always concerned by everything every people did or do. No note so I was stressed about remembering each thing that might be relevant to me.<p>During the lock-down, we started doing it using video calls. We had to wait for everybody to come, including those who where fighting the technology, the sound wasn't always great, the flatmate was still sleeping so it was not ideal for him too.<p>And then, we switched to text in a dedicated channel in our chat. The result?
- I can write it whenever I want before 10 am, without needing to interrupt in the middle of something. I could even write it the evening before if I wanted.
- everybody is efficient in their writing: the standup is actually short and to the point without needing a good moderator!
- I can take my time to formulate, to forget nothing (I don't need to prepare in advance neither)
- I can take my time to read, and to react to other people when relevant, and organize without stress.
- all the relevant info is here
- sometime someone forgets something and responds to there own answer to let people know, and this is good.
- we are supposed to add an "eye" emoji to each standup message so we tell people we read their stuff.<p>Seeing people's faces is great but the standup was an awful occasion for that. But what we did during the first lockdown was following the standup by a "coffee break" to which people were advised to go, and then we got to see people and keep building relationship by speaking about anything, often unrelated to work. I recommend trying this.<p>I don't see a point for the daily synchronous stand up now that I lived standup in text format. If you need to build relationship, do breaks in which people get to speak about something else than work… or about work at times! But without rush and without lengthy unwanted digressions.