5 questions on asynchronous and written standup formats — reading Slack/Geekbot updates, understanding standup shorthand, and the difference between async and sync meetings.
Async standup key vocabulary
async standup — written updates collected by a bot (Geekbot, StandupBot) instead of a live call
sync call — a real-time meeting where everyone is live simultaneously
N/A — Not Applicable (field doesn't apply today)
carryover — a task that continues from the previous day
OOO — Out Of Office
meeting fatigue — exhaustion from too many video calls
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
Your team uses Geekbot to run asynchronous standups in Slack. What are the three questions Geekbot (and most async standup tools) ask each team member?
The three standup questions are the same whether the standup is synchronous (live meeting) or asynchronous (Geekbot, Slack, written update):
What did you do yesterday? — completed work
What will you do today? — planned work
Are there any blockers? — obstacles preventing progress
These questions come from the Scrum Guide's Daily Scrum format. Tools like Geekbot, StandupBot, Parabol, and Range send these questions automatically at a configured time and collect the answers in a shared Slack channel.
Advantage of async standups: Distributed teams in different time zones can contribute updates without scheduling a meeting — the bot collects responses and posts them to the team channel.
2 / 5
You are reading your team's Geekbot standup thread. One update reads: "Yesterday: N/A — public holiday. Today: Picking up where I left off on the auth refactor. Blockers: None." How should you read the entry "Yesterday: N/A"?
N/A = Not Applicable — a standard written shorthand used when a field does not apply to the current situation.
In this standup entry, "Yesterday: N/A — public holiday" is a clear and professional way to communicate: there is nothing to report for yesterday because it was a non-working day.
Common async standup shorthand:
N/A = Not Applicable (field doesn't apply)
WFH = Working From Home
OOO = Out Of Office
EOD = End of Day
ETA = Estimated Time of Arrival (expected completion)
carryover = a task from yesterday that continues today
Reading async standups fluently requires recognising these abbreviations quickly.
3 / 5
You are skimming the following async standup thread in Slack:
Priya: "Yesterday: reviewed PRs. Today: finishing the search indexing task. Blockers: none." Marcus: "Yesterday: deployment pipeline work. Today: same. Blockers: waiting on DevOps to provision the test environment." Elena: "Yesterday: bug fixes for #342. Today: starting on the onboarding flow. Blockers: none."
Who has blockers?
Marcus has a blocker: "waiting on DevOps to provision the test environment." His deployment pipeline work depends on an environment that has not yet been provisioned by the DevOps team.
How to skim standup threads: When reading multiple async updates, scan for:
"Blockers:" or "Blocked:" — any text other than "none" here needs attention
Phrases like "waiting on", "pending", "can't continue until" — these signal hidden blockers even if the person didn't label them clearly
Marcus's blocker pattern: "waiting on [another team]" is one of the most common blocker types in cross-functional teams. It needs to be escalated to the person who can unblock it (here, the DevOps team).
4 / 5
In an async standup update, a developer writes: "Today: carryover from yesterday — still working on the data migration script." What does "carryover" indicate?
Carryover means a task that was planned for the previous day (or sprint) was not finished and rolls into the next day.
In standups, "carryover" signals:
The task took longer than estimated
The developer is still in progress — this is normal for complex tasks
If the same task carries over repeatedly, it may indicate an estimation problem or a hidden blocker
Related vocabulary:
"Continuing from yesterday" — same meaning, more explicit
"Still in progress" — status update without naming it a carryover
"Slipped from last sprint" — a task that moved from one sprint to the next (more serious)
Using "carryover" is professional — it shows the developer is being transparent about progress rather than silently re-listing the same task.
5 / 5
Your engineering manager asks: "Should we move to async standups to reduce meeting fatigue?" Which format reduces meeting fatigue more — async or synchronous standups?
Async standups reduce meeting fatigue primarily by removing the mandatory fixed meeting time — a significant source of friction, especially for distributed teams.
How async standups help:
No requirement to join a call at a specific time — important for different time zones
No context-switch cost of stopping deep work to join a meeting
Team members can read updates when convenient, not in real time
Reduces the number of calendar events (a key driver of meeting fatigue)
Trade-offs:
Async standups lose real-time discussion and the social connection of a live call
Blockers may be noticed and acted on more slowly
Best used in combination: async most days + a sync call once or twice per week
"Meeting fatigue" is the exhaustion caused by too many video calls — a widely recognised problem in distributed engineering teams.