Scrum standups: Love them or dread them, they're a daily ritual for thousands of engineering teams around the globe. But lately, there's a growing debate about their real value, especially in remote or highly collaborative teams. Some swear by standups as a vital touchpoint for transparency and alignment, while others argue they're becoming outdated and unnecessary in an era of constant communication.
This debate leads to a critical question that many Scrum Masters and engineering leads grapple with: Should your team replace or supplement daily standups? Are there better ways to stay aligned, transparent, and efficient without sacrificing productivity or morale?
In this article, we'll explore why traditional Scrum standups might not be serving your team anymore, introduce three fresh alternatives, and help you decide if—and how—you might rethink your daily sync. Let's dive in.
Signs That It’s Time to Rethink Your Scrum Standups
If you struggle with daily standups, you're not alone. Many engineering leads and Scrum Masters have noticed that what began as an essential Scrum practice can sometimes feel like an outdated ritual. But how do you know when it's time to reconsider your approach?
1. When Your Standups Turn into Status Reports
Have your daily standups become monotonous check-ins where team members simply repeat the same status updates day after day? If your meeting feels like an endless loop of repetitive updates without fresh insights, your team might be trapped in an "update rut." That’s usually your first clue that it's time for a change.
Moreover, if your team already collaborates effectively through Jira comments, dedicated Slack channels, or other communication tools, traditional standups might just be echoing what's already been shared. After all, the purpose of a standup isn't merely to repeat what everyone already knows—it's about alignment and swiftly addressing roadblocks.
2. Feeling Like Your Standups Waste Time?
When your team views standups as more of a chore than a valuable conversation, engagement suffers—and so does productivity. You might notice team members multitasking, mentally checking out, or voicing frustrations about standups being irrelevant or unproductive.
Another telling sign is when standups start to drift into unrelated conversations or deep dives that aren’t relevant to everyone. Standups should offer concise, meaningful interactions that benefit the team as a whole, not sprawling, energy-draining meetings.
3. Over-Structured Communication is Limiting Your Team
Effective teams naturally gravitate toward seamless, informal communication—often solving problems organically throughout the day. If your team frequently resolves issues in real-time through informal channels, enforcing daily standups can feel rigid or overly structured.
When teams communicate openly and address challenges quickly without needing formal meetings, mandatory daily standups might become an unnecessary hurdle rather than a helpful routine.
4. Remote Teams Face Unique Frustrations
Remote and distributed teams often feel extra pressure when it comes to daily standups. Scheduling across multiple time zones can become a logistical nightmare, turning what should be a quick check in into a chore.
Additionally, standups for remote teams can unintentionally become transactional—each person quickly rattles off their updates without truly collaborating or engaging. If your standups feel more like checking a box than genuinely connecting, it's a clear indicator you need an alternative.
If these scenarios sound familiar, it's probably time to experiment with alternatives to the traditional Scrum standup. Your team deserves meetings that feel meaningful and energizing, not repetitive and draining. Next, we’ll explore three innovative approaches that could reinvigorate how your team aligns and collaborates.
3 Alternatives to Scrum Standups
Standups are meant to help teams stay aligned and quickly address blockers, but as we've seen, they don’t always hit the mark. If you’re starting to doubt their effectiveness, here are three practical, flexible alternatives you can try:
1. Async Standups: One increasingly popular alternative is to shift your standups from synchronous meetings to asynchronous check-ins. Tools like Rally Chat or Geekbot allow your team members to share their daily updates in written format—without having to drop everything at a specific time. If you' want to learn more about this, we wrote an article on how to host successful Async Standups.
Why it works:
Async standups give your team the flexibility to provide updates when it fits into their schedule, removing the hassle of coordinating across busy calendars or juggling time zones. Plus, having a written record creates a clear history of progress, blockers, and key decisions, which can boost clarity and accountability.
Of course, a common concern is maintaining transparency and alignment. To address this, encourage team members to briefly read each other's updates and flag critical issues or blockers immediately. You can also schedule a weekly live session to reinforce team bonds and ensure alignment, making async standups complementary rather than purely substitutive.
2. Weekly Sync + Ongoing Chat Discussions: Another option is to replace daily standups entirely with a single weekly synchronous meeting combined with ongoing discussions in a team chat channel or an open Rally session. Rather than daily interruptions, your team sets aside one dedicated weekly meeting for high-level updates, strategic alignment, and broader context-setting.
Throughout the week, team members proactively use a dedicated chat space—like Rally's ongoing sessions or Slack channels—to immediately surface blockers or request quick input.
For example:
Imagine an engineering team where it's the norm to create a Rally session to gain clarification and discuss work items on Jira. Instead of waiting for standup or any other kind of meeting, team members use Rally to proactively flag blockers or ask for feedback as issues arise. By the time the weekly sync rolls around, the conversation focuses on high-level progress, roadblocks that need deeper collaboration, or strategic decisions. This saves significant time on repetitive daily updates.
2. Weekly Sync with Ongoing Chat Discussions
Another option is combining a single weekly live sync with continuous chat-based communication. Replace your daily standup ritual with a weekly session dedicated to discussing broader team goals, high-level updates, and collective challenges.
Throughout the rest of the week, team members can communicate urgent issues, blockers, or quick updates using an ongoing chat channel like those available in Rally. This approach provides your team the flexibility of asynchronous communication while maintaining regular checkpoints for more strategic conversations.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
Let's say your team members consistently flag blockers immediately on your team's dedicated Rally channel. With this setup, daily meetings become unnecessary because team members already have visibility into everyone else's work. The weekly sync then becomes a valuable time for higher-level discussions, strategic decision-making, and reinforcing your team's shared vision.
3. Office Hours
Office hours are another refreshing way to rethink the traditional standup meeting. Instead of scheduling daily standups, establish regular “open-door” sessions—perhaps two or three times a week—where team members can join only when they have something specific to discuss.
Benefits include:
- Reducing the burden of mandatory, potentially irrelevant meetings
- Allowing team members to focus more consistently on deep work
- Creating a clear space for collective problem-solving only when necessary
This approach works particularly well in environments where team members already communicate proactively through tools like Rally or Jira and rarely need daily intervention. Office hours offer reassurance that a designated time exists for issues that can’t be quickly resolved asynchronously, removing the pressure to attend mandatory daily meetings.
Should Teams Really Remove Daily Standup?
Some argue that standups are non-negotiable. After all, Scrum teaches us that daily standups are fundamental for maintaining inspection, transparency, and adaptation. As one Scrum Master shared on Reddit: “As a Scrum Master, your role is to ensure standups happen daily. Removing them reduces transparency and inspection.”
And there’s truth in that perspective. Without regular check-ins, teams may become misaligned, missing crucial opportunities to adapt quickly, or worse—failing to surface blockers until it’s too late.
But let's pause and ask ourselves: Is the real issue the standup itself, or the way we've been conducting them?
If your standups have turned into status updates or repetitive meetings, the problem might lie in execution rather than the practice. Maybe your standups lack clear objectives, or perhaps team members don't feel comfortable raising genuine concerns. It might even point to deeper communication issues within your team, such as a lack of proactive collaboration or psychological safety.
A Scrum Master from a recent Reddit discussion captured this perfectly: "As a Scrum Master, your role is to ensure transparency, inspection, and adaptation happen daily. Standups are a proven way to do this, and removing them might reduce your visibility and responsiveness."
But even advocates for daily standups acknowledge the importance of flexibility. Teams shouldn't be confined by rituals—they should be empowered by them. Ceremonies should adapt and evolve based on your team's real needs.
That’s why flexibility and intentionality are key. A software engineering team, for instance, may decide to pause daily standups temporarily, replacing them with asynchronous updates. Initially, it may improve productivity—but soon after, they found gaps in their alignment. So they reintroduced synchronous meetings, but in a less frequent, more focused format, complemented by continuous async communication through dedicated chat tools.
This hybrid approach can offer the best of both worlds—retaining the core benefits of standups while addressing specific team pain points. Tools like Rally can effectively facilitate this balance, providing a platform to handle blockers, document conversations, and maintain transparency asynchronously, all without mandating rigid, daily meetings.
Ultimately, the goal isn’t to follow Scrum practices to the letter. It’s to continuously refine your processes to meet your team's unique needs and foster genuine, meaningful collaboration.
Conclusion
Daily standups aren't inherently good or bad—what truly matters is how well they're tailored to your team's needs. The takeaway is simple: regularly review your standup and when necessary, adapt your approach. Tools like Rally, can help your team experiment with alternative standup methods that improve transparency, boost productivity, and maintain alignment without falling into rigid routines.
Ready to rethink your standups? Start small, measure impact, and keep iterating to find the best fit for your team.
