Geekbot automates recurring tasks. It runs daily standups, collects surveys, shares responses, and posts updates to your slack channels at a time and pace that suits. This session was filmed at Slack’s Amazing Teams event in San Francisco in March of 2016.This session will provide tips and tricks for staying focused. Geekbot runs asynchronous standup meetings in Slack! Experience non intrusive meetings that bring transparency to your team and stay focused on the real tasks. Join thousands of teams that use Geekbot daily for self management and transparency. Sign up for a free 30 day trial, it only takes minutes to set up! Geekbot likes people to stay in sync. And this applies to our price plans as much as your daily workflows. That's why the bot will never hit your team with an unexpected charge or ask you to pay for a Slack channel member who doesn't actually use Geekbot's service.
Bored expressions, the same three question agenda and fifteen minutes of unproductive status reporting. Daily scrum standups, an integral part of agile methodology are often considered an unavoidable burden. Slack apps and integrations can change the way teams hold daily scrums. It brings in the ease of a messenger app and offers a ton of features that will make daily standups effective and fun.
How Slack Apps Improve the Daily Standup
Daily scrums often run longer than 15 minutes and can quickly turn into a problem-solving meeting. Conducting this meeting for a remote team is even more difficult Finding a time that suits team members from different time zones. Work starts only after the scrum is conducted., this adversely affects the productivity of the team. Slack apps and integrations can solve all the problems associated with daily scrums. Slack makes it easier to run asynchronous standups. Asynchronous meetings offer the following benefits:
- Teams across different time zones do not have to meet at inconvenient times.
- Different teams can stay abreast of what the other teams are working on without having “scrum of scrums”
- A written record of updates is available that can be referred to at any time.
In our article “Scrum Meeting Template-Best Practices for an Effective Scrum” we have mentioned why the scrum meeting is important and how it can be conducted. In this blog post, we list some of the best Slack bots you can use to make your scrum meeting effective.
1. Tatsu
Tatsu meaning “to stand” helps conduct a meeting in a round robin fashion. ‘Start’ will notify the channel that the meeting is starting and ask the first participant to answer the questions. It also allows users to skip attendees or dismiss them. Once the meeting ends, Tatsu will save the answers and send a report via email. The great thing about Tatsu is that it allows you to customize the questions so that it aligns with your team’s work. You can also have Tatsu ask any number of questions, instead of just three. Tatsu is priced at $1 per person per month.
Image credit Tatsu
2. GeekBot
Geekbot is another great Slack app for asynchronous standups. Geekbot helps you conduct multiple standups and keep different departments in sync. Team members answer questions posted by the bot and the answers are then available on the specific Slack channel This helps teams stay updated without shifting focus from the task at hand.
Custom questions can be set for each team and you can even set the mood of the Geekbot to casual or serious. A dedicated dashboard helps you keep track of all the standups and edit them as required. Geekbot helps you improve your decision-making process by providing transparent work status. Geekbot is priced at $3 per participant billed monthly.
Image credit Geekbot
3. Standuply
Standuply can help you run asynchronous standup meetings via text, video or voice. Standuply allows you to record video messages with a /video command, it is uploaded to Youtube and the link is shared on Slack. The results of your standup meetings can also be sent to relevant stakeholders. This enables everyone to stay updated on team progress without having to attend multiple meetings.
Standuply can also integrate with apps like JIRA and bring agile charts to the team. List your favorite websites and Standuply displays updates and news from there. You can even set up reminders to keep your team accountable. Standuply’s Slack Poll feature allows you to set one time or recurring polls. Standuply pricing plans start at $5 for 3 respondents billed monthly.
Image credit Standuply
Slack Standup
4. VoiceStandup
Don’t just limit your scrum meetings to text updates, VoiceStandup allows you to record and share audio updates for your daily standup. A live dashboard enables teams to run online voice based meetings that will be recorded. The link to this audio recording is then posted on a specific Slack channel. VioceStandup improves situational awareness and helps stakeholders stay updated about the team’s progress. VioceStandup pricing plans are designed for teams. It starts at $20 per team billed monthly.
Image credit VoiceStandup
5. MeetNotes
MeetNotes is a collaboration tool for meeting notes, agenda and tasks. It offers a range of meeting templates, including one for the daily scrum. Slack reminders enable meeting organizers to draft an agenda and share it with all meeting attendees. You can click on the agenda link from Slack and add the scrum meeting template. You can also create your own custom template and reuse it. Add questions that best reflect your team’s work.
Discover Blockers and Build Culture with Slack Standup Apps
In traditional synchronous standups blockers are usually solved right after the scrum. The Scrum master will seek out answers and try to find solutions right away. Asynchronous standups may not tackle blockers immediately. It may require consistent follow-up to get them resolved. Setup additional remote meetings to get the blockers resolved.
Building culture through an asynchronous daily standup is difficult. Traditional meetings allow attendees to show their unique personalities and bond with their team members. It gives an opportunity for attendees to add a little humor to their scrum updates. Customize your agenda questions to add humor in asynchronous scrum meetings.
Slack Standup Bot
Run Standups with Slack
Add a few of these bots and change the way your team communicates and collaborates. Use the Daily Standup to keep track of your team’s progress, resolve impediments and propel work forward. Are there any other Slack app you use to run scrum meetings? Let us know in the comments below.
Many agile teams turn to a Slack retrospective bot to overcome the scheduling nightmare of getting all of their developers (along with the Product Owners and Scrum Master) on the same call at the same time.
In today’s post, we show you how Scrum teams use Geekbot — our Slack retrospective bot — to run asynchronous (and highly effective) retrospectives in Slack.
Using Geekbot to Run Slack Retrospectives
In the sections below, we cover how to use Geekbot to:
- Run your retrospective, collect responses, and engage with your team’s feedback.
Create a New Retrospective via Geekbot’s Dashboard
The first step is to click on “Retrospective” in the upper right corner when selecting from our list of pre-filled templates.
As you can see below, in addition to retrospectives, Geekbot is also used to facilitate asynchronous daily standups, Slack polls and surveys, and more.
Customize When, Where, and Who
Geekbot’s retrospective template is highly customizable so it can be adapted to what your whole team needs.
In our retrospective format, you can modify:
- The schedule: You can select when your retro gets sent out. Some teams complete a sprint retrospective in one day. But some of our customers also do tiered retrospectives that last over several days. (This extra time helps teams provide more insightful and reflective comments, along with other benefits we cover in our article on running tiered remote retrospectives.)
- Retrospective Questions: Geekbot defaults to the four common retrospective questions, but you can rearrange them, delete the ones you don’t want, and add new ones (with no limit to how many questions you can ask).
Asynchronous Stand Ups
- Broadcast Channel: You can make a new Slack channel that’s just for retrospectives, or you can use a pre-existing channel.
- Participants: To save time, you can choose to add all the participants from your broadcast channel, but you can also manually add (or remove) participants who don’t need to fill out the retrospective.
Tips on Scheduling Your Retrospective
Traditionally, retrospectives are held at the end of a sprint, right before your next sprint planning session starts. This gives you time to collect feedback and decide which insights you want to turn into action items going forward.
But every agile team is different, especially when it comes to holding asynchronous retrospective meetings.
With Geekbot, we made it so you can schedule our retrospective bot as it makes sense for your team.
You can pick the time period and days the retrospective questions get sent out.
You can also select the time and time zone.
It’s often best to select “User’s local time zone” so Geekbot factors in where team members are geographically, and they get the retrospective questions sent to them at the right time.
If you manually select the timezone for each participant, you run the risk of mistaking and sending the retrospective questions too late or too early in the day.
Send Out Your Retrospective and Collect Responses
Geekbot will send out the retrospective questions in Slack to teammates at the date and time you scheduled.
When it’s time to complete the retrospective questions, team members get a notification like a normal Slack bot alert.
It’s okay if they don’t respond to the retrospective immediately. Geekbot will send a reminder to team members who haven’t provided their answers, making it easier on you because you don’t have to individually follow up with everyone who forgot to reply.
Note: Download genesis techwin driver. Although the reminder feature is optional, most of our customers choose to turn it on.
Once the retrospective answers are in, Geekbot shares each teammate’s responses in the appropriate Slack channel.
Note: You can also view the retrospective responses in Geekbot’s dashboard, filtered by date and time. Plus, you can choose to get your team’s responses emailed to you.
From there, team members can reply to each other (if they need to follow up or clarify something) by creating threads and conversations without disrupting other teammates.
Slack Geekbot 使い方
Final Thought: Adding Geekbot to Your Workflow
We designed Geekbot’s Slack retrospective bot to help you easily run asynchronous and value-driven retrospectives.
And that same Slack integrated technology is what lets teams run asynchronous daily standups, remote well-being check-ins, Slack polls, and much more.
We use Geekbot everyday ourselves, and we’re proud and thankful that over 60,000 customers have signed up, including teams at companies such as GitHub, GitLab, Zapier, Shopify, and more.
Note: Are you ready to start holding retrospectives with the help of our Slack retrospective bot? Click here to start your free trial.
Frequently asked questions
How Can I Make My Retrospectives More Fun?
Team members can easily develop a hum-drum response to retrospectives, treating them like just another meeting to check off.
This isn’t good for your future sprints — the point of a retrospective is to identify what isn’t working and what is.
Retrospective games are designed to get your participants to think in such terms.
For more information, read our article on 10 Retrospective Game Ideas.