Status Updates Should Be 60-90 Seconds

Daily and weekly standup status updates should only be 60-90 seconds long per team member.

Anything longer than necessary is likely to waste everyone else’s time.

If people are interested in learning more or discussing a related topic to your status update, they should stay after the meeting to do so. This is so that other people can promptly be released from the meeting and return to work.

What happens when status updates run long?

• People check out.
• It wastes everyone’s time.
• The meeting becomes a nuisance.

To keep the meeting moving, some co-located teams have resorted to holding a weighted object, as described in this article.

Who’s responsibility is it to keep each status update short?

Typically, the person who called the meeting. It can also be the Project Manager, Engineering Manager, or Team Lead.

Keep Your Status Updates to 60-90 seconds.

That’s it.

See how short this blog post is?

It’s for the same reason – it doesn’t need to be long. If you have a question, ask me on Twitter.