What is Daily Standup?
The daily standup (or daily scrum) is a short, time-boxed meeting — ideally 15 minutes or less — where team members synchronize. The traditional format has each person answer: What did I do yesterday? What will I do today? What is blocking me?
The goal is coordination and surfacing blockers fast, not detailed status reporting to a manager. Deep problem-solving is "taken offline" to a smaller group after the standup so the meeting stays brief and useful for everyone.
PMs often attend to stay close to delivery, unblock the team (by chasing decisions, dependencies, or stakeholders), and catch scope or risk issues early. A standup that consistently runs long or feels like a status report to the PM is usually a sign the format needs a reset.
Examples
- An engineer raises that they are blocked on a design decision; the PM resolves it immediately after standup.
- The team uses an async written standup in Slack across time zones instead of a live call.
Where PMs use this
Related terms
Scrum
A popular Agile framework that organizes work into fixed-length sprints with defined roles, events, and artifacts.
Sprint
A fixed, short period (typically 1–2 weeks) during which a Scrum team completes a set of committed work.
Retrospective
A recurring team meeting to reflect on the last sprint and identify concrete process improvements.