Smarter Week

How to automate it

How to automate “sit in standups, sprint planning and retros”

Here are 2 ways to spend less time on this, best first. Each comes with steps you can follow today.

60 min
typically, a few times a week
35%
of the time can be automated
Easy
to set up

Fix 1 of 2

Process fixBest fix

Cut sprint ceremonies to what the team actually uses

Many teams run every ceremony at full length out of habit. Async standups, shorter planning and less frequent retros keep the value with less meeting time.

Typically saves about 30% of the time30 min to set up
  1. 1Move the daily standup to an async check-in in chat on most days.
  2. 2Have the lead and PM pre-groom the backlog so planning is about choices, not reading tickets.
  3. 3Run retros every other sprint, or only when something went wrong.
  4. 4Time-box every ceremony and end early when done.

Tools: Slack or Teams · Geekbot or a Slack workflow · Jira or Linear

Fix 2 of 2

Process fix

Replace the status meeting with a written update

Everyone posts three lines in a shared thread before a set time; you only meet when something is blocked.

Typically saves about 60% of the time15 min to set up
  1. 1Agree a format: done, next, blocked.
  2. 2Create a channel or a thread that repeats every week.
  3. 3Ask everyone to post by a set time; the lead reads them and replies to the blockers.
  4. 4Keep a shorter meeting only for the blockers, or cancel it outright.

Tools: Slack, Teams or email

Who does this task

Roles in our library that list this as one of their common tasks. Each guide covers the rest of that role’s week.

Software engineerQA / Test engineerDevOps / Site reliability engineer

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