The Best Free Daily Standup Tools In 2022
In today’s remote-first world, daily stand-ups are an effective method to gauge how teams are performing, how they’re progressing in their projects, and what’s planned for the day.
“Standup” is a self-explanatory term. It’s about a meeting where every member of the team is standing. The meeting allows members to share information about their current project, define priorities, and seek assistance with any roadblocks. The basic principle behind the standup format is “standing” instead of sitting, which encourages the engineering managers or VP of engineering to keep the meeting brief and to the point.
In this post, we’ll discuss scrum stand-ups, their importance, and the 13 best free daily standup tools to watch for in 2022.
What is scrum standup?
A standup meeting is also known as a daily scrum meeting. It is a team meeting held to provide a status update to all members of a development team. This semi-real-time status update flags potential issues and coordinates efforts to solve issues and time-consuming situations. Standup meetings are most frequent in agile development processes such as scrum, but they may be applied to any development method.
Standups should last no more than 15 minutes for daily standups. You must ensure that the team gets their message through quickly for them to be valuable and effective. Long and boring meetings cause people to lose concentration, so make standups short and sweet. Timing the meeting is an excellent approach to ensure that it does not go beyond schedule.
Why are standups important?
Daily standups improve communication, eliminate extraneous meetings, identify and remove development roadblocks, emphasize and promote quick decision-making, and improve the development team’s information stage.
The daily scrum standup can be used to monitor progress toward the sprint goal and work status in the sprint backlog. Following the daily scrum, the development team or individual team members regularly meet for in-depth discussions or to adjust or re-plan the remainder of the sprint’s work. Daily standup meetings are a recurring solution to a specific set of problems that develop when a group tries to operate as a team.
The daily standup is used to bring everyone up to speed on the project without requiring them to attend a lengthy meeting. The structure of these standup meetings varies, but team members typically review tasks they performed the previous days, tasks they aim to complete today, and any difficulties or challenges they need to address. Your team can hold these meetings asynchronously in a virtual standup meeting or use notes from in-person status meetings as a reference with the daily standup meeting app.
How standups help async work
Successful remote teams use asynchronous work to boost productivity in the workplace. Individuals’ tasks are completed in async work without the need for real-time collaboration. By allowing people to work when they are most productive, async work boosts team productivity and encourages a better work-life balance. Standups have evolved to take on an async persona in line with asynchronous work, thanks to communication tools.
Instead of virtual standup meetings, async standup updates are now transmitted as text messages to an all-team member of the channel. The standup is structured in a three-question format, what work was done yesterday, what is on the agenda for today, and what are the blockers/challenges to be solved by teammates. This successfully communicates progress and roadblocks faced by team members. These asynchronous standup meetings have successfully avoided the disadvantages of traditional synchronous standup meetings:
- Asynchronous standups are considerate of the team members’ time zones. Due to async communication channels, every development team member can provide updates during their normal working hours.
- The time saved by not attending meetings might be better used on other activities or even personal breaks that improve well-being.
- Asynchronous standups have the added benefit of providing detailed documentation of everyone’s progress, increasing accountability and openness. Because all relevant information is recorded and can be examined and addressed completely, it also supports managers in fostering teamwork and assisting individuals facing roadblocks more effectively and comprehensively.
The best free daily standup tools in 2022
The key to succeeding at remote and async standups is the adoption of a robust daily standup tool. Here are the top tools that we’re excited about for 2022:
Hatica
Hatica facilitates automated check-ins via Slack, email, or the Hatica app to run async standups. With email or Slack-delivered automated reports, engineering managers can easily get visibility into their dev team activity, progress, blockers, and more. Furthermore, Hatica is a comprehensive engineering analytics platform that equips engineering leaders with git metrics like Code Churn, Cycle time, PR metrics etc, project insights, and collaboration analytics dashboards like Makers time, etc that can boost engineering teams’ productivity.
We especially like Hatica’s transparent pricing with monthly payment options. The free forever plan for startups that includes all core features is a hit among start-ups. For larger teams, the Growth plan is priced at $12/month per team member for larger teams which includes
- 80+ development metrics
- Custom dashboards
- Unlimited integrations
- Goal tracking
- Automated reports, and more
Standuply
Within Slack, Standuply automates standups and other types of agile meetings. You might think of it as a “Digital Project Management Assistant.” The development team can choose from many mentors online and hire them for a consultation call or ask a one-time question through Standuply’s unique mentoring program. Standuply is a project management application with extensive automation features that increase communication and knowledge availability.
Key features:
- Agile Methodologies
- Cost-to-Completion Tracking
- Customizable Templates
- Gantt Charts
- Kanban Board
Cadence
Cadence is popular among users because of its high integrability, ecosystem specificity, employee-relatedness, minimal team size, and communication. It’s good for organizing, facilitating, and planning small-group events that foster meaningful connections for your team. Cadence handles every detail for you, from generating an activity plan to dealing with reschedules.
Key features:
- Remote Access
- Remote Support
- Softphone
- Task Management
- Time Zone Tracking
Range
If you’re dealing with multiple apps, Range is a great daily standup tool to achieve your daily tasks. It centralizes check-ins and makes it easier to keep track of what everyone is up to, even if they’re using different tools. With a single click, you may send progress reports to others via email. Employees can also reflect on their moods and answer team development questions created by specialists.
Key features:
- Goal management
- Collaboration
- Time zone tracking
- Task management
- Progress tracking
Ricotta
Ricotta on Slack can help you align and engage your team. Set ambitious objectives and measurable key results in your organization by implementing the OKR goal-setting methodology. Ricotta lets teams that work from home and remote teams collaborate efficiently by creating clear goals, boosting openness, and increasing employee engagement. Teams may also keep track of their weekly tasks and to-do items on Ricotta without leaving slack.
Key features:
- Feedback management
- Progress tracking
- Reporting (Analytics)
- Goal Management
- Strategic alignment
Complish
Complish is an asynchronous collaboration platform that uses asynchronous communication to help distant teams connect and stay aligned with fewer, better sessions. Complish facilitates the development of high-performing remote and distributed teams by enhancing asynchronous communication and encouraging regular check-ins.
Key features:
- Goal management
- Team OKR
- Progress tracking
Friday
Friday standup tool can send an email or a Slack message prompting you to offer a daily standup update. Friday allows you to generate automated question prompts that you may send to your team daily. Compared to other asynchronous standup tech solutions, the Friday standup tool is better for development teams that need to keep all of their communication in one location. This tech tool has many added features that allow you to manage your tasks and teams from one central location.
Key features:
- Benchmarking
- Feedback Management
- Goal tracking
- Report on progress
- Pulse Surveys
Jell
Jell is a tool for daily standup meetings that may also be used for task management and setting OKRs. This daily standup tool is focused on results. It has various communication features that make it perfect for large or distant teams, and it helps you create goals and track progress. Jell integrates with various applications, including Slack, Microsoft Teams, GitHub, Trello, Jira, and others.
Key features:
- Calendar Management
- Real-Time Editing
- Task Management
- Video Conferencing
Tatsu
If you want no-frills daily standup software, Tatsu is a wonderful choice. Asynchronous meetings can be organized with this technology. By clicking on a button, you can schedule meetings or begin a daily scrum standup session.
Key features:
- Video conferencing
- Calendar management
- Goal tracking
Dailybot
Dailybot is a tech tool that supports daily standups, retrospectives, and check-ins. You can use it to get updates via a daily chat channel or via email. Dailybot provides a suite of async work and collaboration tools, including daily standups, team check-ins, surveys, kudos, a virtual watercooler, 1:1 intros, motivation monitoring, and more. Dailybot maintains communication with your colleagues and also reduces the number of meetings that aren’t essential.
Key features:
- Collaboration
- Meeting Management
- Remote Access
- Remote Support
- Task Management
StatusHero
StatusHero is a comprehensive tech tool for managing async standups. Your development team can effortlessly check-in, and supervisors can see everyone’s status at a glance. StatusHero connects to your project management software and pulls in activities for check-ins and a live activity stream. You’ll also get real-time data on participation, goals, roadblocks, and team attitude on a single dashboard..
Key features:
- Collaboration
- Create Subtasks
- Mobile Access
- Progress Tracking
- Task Tracking
WhatGotDone
WhatGotDone tech tool is a quick and easy approach to update your teammates on the project progress. Reflect on your accomplishments at the end of each week. Keep your peers up to date, boost your enthusiasm, and put an end to those tedious status meetings. Instead of requiring your coworkers to dig through a list of checkboxes,
WhatGotDone allows you to write updates your way, highlighting what’s important. WhatGotDone is a free, open-source project to which anyone can contribute features or bug fixes using the public Github page.
Key features:
- Remote access
- Remote support
Standupbot
Standupbot helps you save time during your daily meetings. Standupbot is a tool for automating daily meetings without sacrificing their effectiveness. In just four clicks, you can have your standup ready to go. Its servers use encrypted channels to interact with Slack. It can only save your reports in its password-protected database.
Key features:
- Team collaboration
- Meeting management
- Employee monitoring
- Task management
- Remote access
Conclusion
Effective communication and alignment with the common purpose are the greatest ways to keep your remote employees engaged. Standup tools will review their performance, identify solutions to their problems, and increase their visibility as they receive daily information on what their colleagues are doing.
So, before you try out cutting-edge management techniques for your remote employees, you should start with tried-and-true methods like a daily standup meeting. However, it’s essential to pick a daily update tool that fits seamlessly into your existing workflows while still delivering the functionality you need to perform efficient daily standups.