What To Cut From Your Standup So It Ends In Nine Minutes

A standup runs long because four other meetings have crept into it. Cut the problem solving, the reporting upward, the demos and the status theatre, and what is left takes about nine minutes for a team of six. The two things worth keeping are what each person is blocked on and what is changing today for someone else.

Everything else has a better home. Here is the list of what to cut from your standup, and where each piece should go instead. Moving something out only helps if there is a slot to move it into, so it is worth knowing how many meetings a week a small team can carry before you schedule anything new.

Cut the problem solving

Someone mentions a problem, two people start solving it, and the other four watch for eleven minutes. This is the single biggest cost in most standups, and it feels productive, which is why it survives.

The fix is a phrase, said by the same person every day: "take it after". The two people who care stay on the call or step aside afterwards. Nobody else loses the time.

The test is simple. If a discussion involves fewer than half the people in the room, it is not a standup item.

Cut the reporting upward

If a manager is in the room and people are speaking to the manager rather than to each other, the meeting has quietly become a status report. You can hear it in the language: "I completed the integration work" instead of "the integration is done, so the front end can start".

Reporting upward is a real need, but it wants a different format, usually written and usually weekly, which is exactly the job a weekly review does. A manager who needs daily detail should read the board rather than make six people perform for them each morning.

If you are the manager, the strongest thing you can do is stop asking questions in standup. Ask them afterwards, one to one.

Three smaller cuts

These three are less expensive than the solving, and they are easier to remove because nobody defends them very hard.

Demos

Showing work is good. Doing it in standup is not, because the person showing it wants five minutes and the rest of the team is standing there.

Put demos in their own slot, once or twice a week, and let people opt in. Attendance will be lower and attention will be higher, which is the right trade.

The roll call of yesterday

"Yesterday I worked on the report, today I will work on the report" is a sentence that has never changed anyone's plan. If your board or task list is honest, yesterday's work is already visible there and does not need reading aloud.

The habit persists because the three classic questions are printed on a poster somewhere. Drop the first one. Nobody misses it.

The people who do not need to be there

A standup for a team of six takes nine minutes. A standup for fifteen people takes half an hour, because the number of pairs who might need to talk grows much faster than the headcount.

If your standup has grown past about eight people, it is probably two teams. Split it, and let the two people who genuinely span both attend either.

Keep two things

Blockers

What is each person waiting on, and who can clear it. This is the reason the meeting exists. It is also the item that most often gets rushed at the end when the solving has eaten the time.

Ask for it directly. Not "any blockers", which everyone answers with a no, but "what are you waiting on". Waiting is easier to admit than being stuck, and it surfaces the same information a week earlier.

What changes for someone else

The second thing worth saying out loud is anything that changes another person's day. A handover ready. A branch that will break their work. A file they need to stop editing. A decision made yesterday that changes what someone is building.

This is the coordination the meeting is actually for, and it is the part that cannot be replaced by reading a board, because you often do not know who needs the information until you say it in a room.

What nine minutes looks like

Six people, ninety seconds each, in a fixed order so nobody wonders whose turn it is. One person keeps time and says "take it after" when the solving starts. Nobody sits down, including on video calls, where standing genuinely shortens things. If the team is spread across time zones, the same cuts apply to a written standup.

If it runs long twice in a week, look at which of the cut items has crept back in. It is nearly always the solving.

Announce the change, say what you are cutting and where each thing is going instead, and run it for a fortnight. Then ask the team one question: did anything get missed. In most teams the honest answer is no, and the fifteen minutes a day comes back to everyone.