Before we wrote a line of code for Spinach.io, we spoke to dozens of teams about their development cycles. Specifically, we spent a lot of time observing the daily standup. What we learned:
- Most teams have daily standup 3+ times a week
- Most have daily standup “live” (ie video call)
- Most use Google Meet or Zoom for daily standup
- Most followed a YTB format (yesterday, today, blockers) in daily standup
So, as we set out to build a tool for faster, more-focused standup, this is where we started: live standup with a YTB format. And our plan was to expand from there.
Step 1: Live or async standup
Two weeks ago, Spinach expanded to support async standup. You can read more about that here.
Meeting free day?
You can now run your standup async, without losing any history or context from previous live standups. Just fill out your check-ins, skip the live meeting, and we’ll post a summary in Slack (and the app) at whatever time you choose. At Spinach, we do async standup every Wednesday because it's our Meeting Free day.
Need to skip standup?
Stuff happens and sometimes you need to miss standup. No problem. You can enter your check-in, and if you aren’t in the live meeting Spinach will still share your updates with a clear “Async Check-in” label. You can see what you missed in the automatic notes in Slack (and the app).
Step 2: Custom categories
This week, we are taking customization one step further, with the launch of new customization features to give you more control over your standup format. Here’s what’s new:
✍️ Create new categories.
Add your own custom categories to the person-by-person Roundtable. The Spinach team likes adding in “Weekend Plans” “Appreciations” or ”Announcements". For any new category you add, you’ll still be able to rollover all items from the last standup to that same category.
💥 Bonus: Custom Categories is also great to quickly crowdsource feedback during standup, and hear from every person without the loudest voice influencing everyone.
🔇 Turn off any YTB category.
Since launching, we talked to many teams who do their own version of YTB, and we support you! You can now remove “Yesterday” “Today” or “Blocker” from your Roundtable.
💿 Turn off Roundtable.
Not every team goes person-by-person in standup. You can now turn off the person-by-person Roundtable and just focus on a shared list of Team Topics. This also works great for running weekly syncs or 1:1s with Spinach.
Watch a demo of these new features in action
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