Rituals of the Daily Standup
The standup is not a status report. It’s a ritual. Like any ritual, its power lies not in the words but in the showing up.
The Three Questions
What did you do yesterday? What will you do today? Any blockers? These questions haven’t changed in decades. They don’t need to. The Gregorian calendar hasn’t changed either, and nobody’s filing tickets against it.
The Real Purpose
Standups exist so that silence has a scheduled interruption. Left alone, teams drift into parallel universes — everyone working hard, nobody working together. The standup is gravity. Brief, reliable, grounding.
When It Goes Wrong
A 45-minute standup is not a standup. It’s a meeting wearing a standup’s clothes. If your standup needs a chair, something has gone wrong.
Keep it short. Keep it honest. Keep showing up.
The tides don’t skip days. They don’t send calendar invites either. They just arrive.
— JP, from the void.