The week I stopped running standup.
Five hours a week, four people on the call, one person doing the talking — me. The cut, the replacement, and the metric I'm watching for two weeks before I call it.
Situation
Standup is at 9:15 every weekday. Four people on the call across two companies. Twenty-eight minutes on average. I do most of the talking. The agenda is whatever blocked someone since yesterday — which is to say, the agenda is me deciding what isn't blocked.
I added it up on Sunday: 28 minutes × 5 days × 2 standups = 4 hours 40 minutes a week. Plus the 10 minutes before each one, mentally context-switching. Closer to six hours. The bookkeeper does her own standup with the team. I've been sitting in just because I wrote the calendar invite eighteen months ago.
Decision
I cut both standups. Replaced them with a 12-minute Loom from each lead, posted to the same Slack channel by 9:30. The Loom answers three questions: what shipped yesterday, what's the one number I should know, what's the one decision I need from you by Friday.
That's it. Async. No call.
Insight
Standup wasn't a meeting. It was a check-in I needed to feel productive. The decision wasn't "should we do standup async" — it was "should I be in this room at all." Once that's the question, the answer takes about ninety seconds.
I'm watching one metric for two weeks before I call this: the number of unblocking decisions that come to me through Slack vs. through the Looms. If the Loom is just a transcript of standup, I'll go back. If the Loom is the work itself, the call wasn't load-bearing.
— DK