Daily Stand-Up & Async Updates
4 exercises — Yesterday / Today / Blockers format, writing async stand-up updates in Slack, and raising blockers clearly and professionally.
0 / 4 completed
Stand-up essentials
- Yesterday — What did you complete? Name specific tasks, PRs, or decisions
- Today — What will you do? Be concrete about the next step, not just "keep working"
- Blockers — What's stopping you? Name the issue, say what you've tried, make a specific ask
- Async format — More detail is better; no real-time clarification available
- Don't debug in stand-ups — surface blockers, schedule the discussion separately
1 / 4
Which daily stand-up update correctly follows the Yesterday / Today / Blockers structure?
Option B is the ideal stand-up update because it is:
Specific about what was done: "finished the auth token refresh endpoint and merged PR #214" — not just "worked on auth"
Action-oriented about today: "starting integration tests for the login flow" — not "continuing the same thing"
Precise about the blocker: Names the dependency (DevOps), specifies the action already taken (pinged them), and indicates what's blocking whom.
Option A — too vague to be useful. "I was busy" tells the team nothing about progress or blockers.
Option C — mixes Yesterday and Today into one; drops the blocker check entirely.
Option D — no update on progress. "Everything is going well" is not a stand-up update.
The golden rule of stand-ups: Each sentence should give your team actionable information — what changed yesterday, what you'll be accountable for today, and what you need from others.
Specific about what was done: "finished the auth token refresh endpoint and merged PR #214" — not just "worked on auth"
Action-oriented about today: "starting integration tests for the login flow" — not "continuing the same thing"
Precise about the blocker: Names the dependency (DevOps), specifies the action already taken (pinged them), and indicates what's blocking whom.
Option A — too vague to be useful. "I was busy" tells the team nothing about progress or blockers.
Option C — mixes Yesterday and Today into one; drops the blocker check entirely.
Option D — no update on progress. "Everything is going well" is not a stand-up update.
The golden rule of stand-ups: Each sentence should give your team actionable information — what changed yesterday, what you'll be accountable for today, and what you need from others.