What is an async standup?
An async standup is a written status update each person posts on their own schedule, gathered into one summary instead of holding a live daily meeting.
Async standup questions
Most teams use three questions, answered in a sentence or two each:
- What did you finish since your last update?
- What are you working on next?
- Is anything blocking you?
The third question matters most. A standup that surfaces one real blocker a day is doing its job even if nobody reads the rest closely.
Async standup vs daily standup
A daily standup is a short live meeting, usually 15 minutes, where everyone answers the same questions out loud. It works well for a co-located team in one time zone. An async standup keeps the questions and drops the meeting, so a team spread across time zones does not have to pick a time that is early for some and late for others.
How to run an async standup
Pick a window rather than a time, for example before noon in each person’s own time zone. Keep answers short and specific, link to the task rather than describing it, and have one person read the summary each day to chase blockers. If nobody acts on what people write, they stop writing.
An async standup template
Copy this into your team channel or standup tool:
- Done: shipped the invoice export; reviewed the pricing page copy.
- Next: start the payment retry logic.
- Blocked: waiting on API credentials from the vendor (asked on Monday).
Remote Team Collaboration Hub collects each person’s check-in on their own schedule and sends the team one automatic digest.
Last reviewed 2026-11-01.