TSYSGroupHandbook/SourceMaterial/company/standups.md

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Daily Standups Handbook true

While we default to written and asynchronous communication, we find that having a few regular touch points for the whole team to come together on a call useful for sharing certain types of information, strengthening our culture and discussing more dynamic issues in real time.

We keep these minimal in terms of time expectation - no more than 2hrs total per week. They are usually scheduled around 8.30am PDT/4.30pm GMT to allow people across multiple timezones to attend more easily.

You should have been invited to our regular standups as part of your onboarding.

Daily Standup Schedule

  • Monday - PostHog News. Members of the team share company-wide updates about things like recruitment, product metrics and commercial performance. The content of these meetings is always confidential. We then go around the team and each person summarises what they did last week and what they plan to do this week.
  • Tuesday - No standup (we keep Tuesdays meeting-free).
  • Wednesday - Anyone can propose to have a meeting about any topic. Stuck with a technical problem? Want to get feedback on something? Want to brainstorm? Schedule those meetings during this timeslot and advertise in Slack.
  • Thursday - No standup (we keep Thursday meeting-free).
  • Friday - These alternate between Sprint Planning and Life Stories.

Sprint Planning

This is a longer 45min meeting every other Friday where we review the previous two week sprint and then outline what we want to achieve in the next 2 weeks. We split into Engineering and Not Engineering teams for this, but schedule the meetings sequentially so that anyone can sit in on both if they would like to.

You will be asked to add your comments to the relevant GitHub planning issue in advance of each meeting on Slack the day before.

Life Stories

Alternating with Sprint Planning, Life Stories we hear from 1-2 members of the team who share a bit about themselves with us. No particular format - it's one of the few times a presentation makes sense! Each team member has up to 30min, inclusive of Q&A. These are a fun opportunity for us to get to know a bit about the people we work with, what cool things we didn't know about them, and whether or not they believe that pineapple belongs on pizza...

Standup Bot

Outside of the above meeting schedule, we still write up our tasks in a standard format in Slack - you will be prompted by Standup Bot. You will be asked what you did since the last standup, what you plan to do before the next one, and any issues or blockers you might have.

This means that everyone still has visibility and context for what everyone else is working on, but delivered in a format that is quick to digest and easier to respond to. We don't do this on meeting-free Tuesdays and Thursday, to minimise interruptions.