Daily stand-ups are a waste of time.

The baggage of bad agile is finally being replaced by asynchronous stand-ups. It's about time.

Daily stand-up meetings have long been a cornerstone of Agile teams, but mounting evidence suggests this ritual often fails to deliver its intended value in modern workplaces. Studies and surveys show that many developers find stand-ups inefficient or even counterproductive . With remote work on the rise and asynchronous tools gaining traction, it’s time to critically assess the daily stand-up’s effectiveness and consider better alternatives.

What is a stand-up and why are they a waste of time?

For the uninitiated/lucky: a daily stand-up is a daily check in call, often first thing in the day (though multiple timezones can put it as late as midday on the east coast).

It’s goal is to keep everyone aligned on a daily basis and team members are asked the same three questions:

1. What did you work on yesterday?

2. What are you working on today?

3. Do you have any blockers?

These meetings are useful for team leaders to manage their teams, and can be useful for team members who either have problems, or could help with them.

For literally everyone else - they’re boring round-robins listening to updates that are neither actionable or useful.

Teams are busy and already personally optimize these meetings so that they distract as little as possible from their work. Here’s what happens:

People aren’t really paying attention.

Observational studies report that team members frequently tune out and focus only on their turn to speak, rather than listening to others . When the discussion only concerns one or two people and isn’t relevant to others, participants disengage – one study noted that not all stand-up content is relevant to all team members, leading to a drop in engagement. This is especially pronounced in larger or cross-functional teams where, for example, developers, testers, and designers may not need each detail of each other’s work. The result is a circle of nodding heads, but minds elsewhere.

They are never just 15 minutes

Stand-ups are intended to be 15-minute time-boxed meetings, yet teams often struggle to keep them short. Research has identified meeting duration as a major obstacle to effective daily stand-ups, with many observed stand-ups exceeding the recommended 15-minute limit . In one survey, most respondents admitted 15 minutes is never enough and meetings usually run overtime . Part of the problem is scope creep – team members dive into problem-solving or off-topic chatter, or simply take too long if the atmosphere is too relaxed (for instance, one finding was that stand-ups lasted 63% longer when people were sitting instead of literally standing). These overruns not only waste time but also break the momentum of the workday.

And then there’s the context switching

Researchers at U.C. Irvine have shown it takes on average 23–25 minutes to regain focus after an interruption. A short 15-minute meeting can thus cause a loss of 30+ minutes of productive time when you account for context-switching. If that meeting wasn’t highly valuable, it’s pure overhead.

Updates are frequently irrelevant and performative

Many remote workers often feel the pressure to prove they’re “online” and available – a phenomenon termed digital presenteeism.

One joint study by Qatalog and GitLab found that this tendency to perform presence (e.g. jumping into every check-in) led remote employees to work 67 extra minutes per day with a direct hit to productivity.

Team members often repeat the same updates day after day (e.g. “still working on X”) which adds little value, or they frame their updates as reports to a manager rather than information for the team.

Why does this matter?

Like many types of internal communication tasks, daily stand-ups are a cost to the business. This isn’t just about some theoretical productivity unlock, this is about the quality of life of our teams.

Most Americans are overworked. The chart above shows the redder the state, the more hours people are putting in. There are only 3 states that are wholly green.

A daily stand-up is designed to be 15 minutes but as noted above, most people take 20-30 minutes a day to either participate or prepare and participate for stand-ups. That’s 6% of time that could be spent on valuable tasks like real collaborative work, or taking the kids to school.

A 2016 grounded study of 12 software teams found that participants disliked the reporting-to-manager dynamic and overly high frequency of the meetings. In other words, the very people the stand-up is meant to help often question whether it’s worth doing every day.

Senior developers and members of large teams tend to be the most skeptical – a survey of 221 professionals found junior devs were generally positive about daily stand-ups, but senior engineers and those on bigger teams rated them much less favorably.

Who do they work for?

Look, there are good stand-ups out there. Exemplars of collaboration, focus and alignment. I’ve even been to a few. Generally they’ve been for small groups of tightly aligned functions who can collaborate at the task level (like design and eng) . Many small engineering teams can get through updates and collaborate in 15 minutes, but let’s be honest - it’s not many.

However when they’re used cross-functionally without little task overlap (for example, product marketing and engineers) most people stop paying attention, time is wasted, and the original goals of transparency and coordination are undermined. This brings us to an important question: if the traditional stand-up isn’t working, what is the alternative?

Remote Work and the Shift to Async Collaboration

The rise of remote and distributed work has magnified the shortcomings of daily stand-ups. Today, 77% of companies operate either fully remote or hybrid teams, many with team members spread across different locations and time zones. This forces stand-ups to be scheduled at 7 AM for one team member and another at 9 PM. Many of the old tricks to keep stand-ups effective (like physically standing to keep it short, or passing a token to manage speaking order) don’t translate to Zoom. As one columnist put it, with teams more widely distributed than ever, the old-school daily huddle “no longer makes sense” in its traditional form.

Equally important is the cultural shift toward asynchronous communication. In a 2020 survey of over 16,000 developers, 70% said that having fewer meetings would help them achieve 100% productivity at work . Developers, like many knowledge workers, need long stretches of focused “deep work” time, and constant interruptions for meetings are a top complaint.

Harvard Business Review notes that companies which cut meeting time by 40% saw productivity jump 71% – an astonishing gain that speaks to how over-meeting can drag down output. It’s no wonder that practices like “No Meeting Wednesdays” or blocking out quiet hours are becoming popular in tech companies.

All these trends point in the same direction: teams are discovering the benefits of asynchronous collaboration. Without the crutch of constant face-to-face meetings, teams found ways to share information in writing, through recorded videos, or via collaborative docs. This reduces the need to “be there now” for every update. As the Slack Future Forum and other industry groups have reported, workers are happier and more productive when they have greater control over their schedules and fewer status meetings to attend. In short, the future of teamwork is looking more async.

The ROI of Moving from Synchronous to Asynchronous Stand-Ups

Beyond the cultural and morale aspects, eliminating daily stand-up meetings (or converting them to an asynchronous format) can yield significant time and cost savings.

Consider the true cost of a 15-minute stand-up: it’s 15 minutes per person, not just 15 minutes total. For a team of N, that’s N × 15 minutes of lost work daily. Over time, the costs stack up:

• Team of 5: 25 hours/month, costing ~$2,500.

• Team of 15: 75 hours/month, costing ~$7,500.

• Team of 30: 150 hours/month, costing ~$15,000.

Now, switch to an async stand-up. Instead of stopping work for 15 synchronized minutes, each person spends just 3–5 minutes speaking with an agent, cutting meeting time by 60–80%. That means potential cost reductions from $2.5K–$15K per month to a fraction of that.

Beyond cost, the real gain is in reclaimed “maker hours” for coding, designing, and problem-solving—high-value work without start-stop friction. Studies show fewer meetings lead to better outcomes and higher job satisfaction. The ROI of async stand-ups isn’t just about saving money; it’s about unlocking real productivity.

What about culture?

For hybrid and remote teams, human contact and worthwhile opportunities to connect and build culture can make or break a company. These should foster connection, understanding, shared perspective and a free and fair exchange of ideas.

“What did you work on yesterday, what will you work on today, do you have blockers?” is no way to build culture. Stand-ups aren’t the solution to culture and I’d argue that bad standups are a poor reflection of the value you place on your team’s time.

AI empowers asynchronous standups

Asynchronous meetings by Slack aren’t new, they’re just changing shape. With agents arriving on the scenes, teams no longer need to type out status updates, chase team members, and set-up calls to resolve blockers.

Today it’s possible to speak naturally about your work, have it summarized and shared with your team and have the agent remove you from stand-ups where your presence won’t create value. Team leads can get automatic summaries of blockers and the dynamic of stand-ups changes from sharing status to problem solving. It’s the cheapest way to accelerate your team’s output by 6%.

Want to try a new asynchronous tool for your team for free?

I’m working on a new tool - Standup Hiro to help teams run asynchronous stand ups. Teams can make a 2-3 minute conversation with Hiro, our agent. Hiro will learn what you did yesterday, what you’re working on and if you’re blocked.

The best thing: 30 minutes before your standup you’ll receive the team’s status report. If you’re on track with your work and can’t help anyone unblock their’s, you get you 30 minutes back for real work.

We’re going into a closed, free beta program next week and we’ve got a few more slots open. The Beta Program will run through end March and will help us refine the reporting and conversation engine. They’re already really effective in our tests.

If you’d like to join the beta program please email Rob@future-work.ai

Ok let’s wrap it up - the daily stand-up was a solution for its time, but times have changed. It’s worth asking if gathering everyone in a Zoom Brady Bunch grid every morning is really helping your team – or if it’s just a habit. As you consider your own team’s practices, look at the evidence and don’t be afraid to break the mold. You might find that cutting the cord on the daily stand-up is one of the best things you do for your team’s focus and flow.

Rob