What are daily stand-ups?

The daily stand-up is a short team meeting of no more than 10 to 15 minutes at the start of every working day. The team discusses and reviews to what extent yesterday’s (production) goals were achieved and what the goals are for today. Obstacles in the work and possible improvements take centre stage. With a daily stand-up you work on continuous improvement every single day.

Characteristics of the daily stand-up

• A daily stand-up always starts at the same time; that is how it becomes a habit for everyone.
• Participants stand during the meeting, which boosts creativity and keeps the pace high.
• The daily stand-up has a fixed structure and agenda.
• The role of chair rotates, which increases the involvement of the participants.
• A daily stand-up always goes ahead, even when team members are absent.

What are the benefits?

It is a good way to increase employees’ involvement in their work:

• By talking to each other briefly every day, everyone gains insight into what the others are working on.
• Pursuing the team goal together becomes clearer, and that creates a stronger team spirit.
• Things that would otherwise be settled by e-mail are now discussed face to face.
• The daily stand-up creates an atmosphere in which it is easier to ask each other for help.

The most important thing about the daily stand-up is that team members gain insight into the shared goal of the department and of the organisation, and keep working towards those goals every day.

This is one of the tools you learn to apply in the Green Belt training.

Elements of the daily stand-up

The agenda consists of fixed items that come back every day, such as: staffing, announcements, looking back at yesterday (what went well, what could be better), looking ahead to today (what are the goals, will we achieve them), obstacles, improvement actions.

Tools during the daily stand-up: the improvement board

A board is used during the daily stand-up. This is called the improvement board or Kata board. The board is filled before the stand-up with the latest information, such as the targets, the performance of the previous day / week and the staffing. (New) improvement points also get a place on the board, so they can be discussed and picked up. An example is shown below.