Level Up Your Daily Standups With These 10 Slack Apps

Your daily scrum meeting is here and nobody’s happy about it. For your team, these meetings always take longer than anticipated. One colleague uses their speaking time to complain about project pain points as everyone nods politely. Members of the Zoom room look increasingly bored as the agenda items morph together into one inefficient status reporting session. To top it off, you can’t seem to find a recurring time that suits everyone’s calendar and multiple attendees are frustrated that they’re missing a virtual workplace event. As the call ends and you close your laptop, you think to yourself: “Why on earth do we still have these meetings?!”. 

Your team’s daily standups don’t have to be this way. Let’s discuss what Slack apps and integrations will make these meetings better for everyone. 

• What are daily standups?
• How Slack apps can enhance your daily standups 
• 10 Slack apps to try during your next standup

What are daily standups?

Often referred to as daily scrums, a daily standup is a quick, 15-minute meeting for your team to plan their next 24 hours. The three standard questions attendees are asked to answer during this meeting format are: What did you do yesterday? What will you do today? And, is there anything blocking your progress? The purpose is to catch all members of a team up to speed on short-term progress to achieve long-term results. 

How Slack apps can enhance your daily standups 

Agile teams use daily scrums to plan and ask for help. Think of this meeting like a huddle in American football: the motive is to connect about strategy, not to give simple updates. Slack apps can change the way teams hold daily standups. With an array of features and the simplicity of a messaging app you’re probably already using, Slack has a few tools for you to discover that will help make meetings more engaging and productive for everyone.

10 Slack apps to try during your next standup

• Standuply
• Fellow
• Tatsu
• Kyber
• GeekBot
• Standup & Prosper
• Standup Alice 
• Standup Buddy
• Polly
• Standup Jack

1Standuply 

Features: 

Often considered one of the best daily scrum bots for Slack, Standuply is your team’s agile development assistant. The app integrates into Slack to connect your team with experts and Q&As that answer recurring questions and automate processes. In addition to running daily standups within Slack, Standuply can also automate advanced human resources and project management workflows. 

Pricing:

• Starter – $0/month (automation and Q&A system for three users)
• Team – $2.50/month (automation and Q&A system for selected users)
• Business – $4.00/month (automation and Q&A system for selected users)
• Enterprise – custom pricing

2Fellow 

Features:

Our very own Slack bot sets reminders about your upcoming meetings, shares a daily digest of action items, and notifies you when someone sends a feedback request. Fellow’s Slack integration also offers Slack actions which allow you and your teammates to act on important meeting points in the Slack app as they come up. Additionally, Fellow’s Slack App Home displays an overview of your workday that includes everything from upcoming meetings to smaller action items. 

Pricing: Starts at $7 per user per month

Learn more about Fellow’s plans

3Tatsu

Features:

Tatsu allows teams to run daily standup meetings quickly and efficiently using a “round robin” format on Slack. Once attendees start the meeting, participants are asked one-by-one to answer customized questions that get the day’s workflow started. Tatsu saves each person’s answers and sends an email report to the attendees once the meeting ends. During the meeting, you may dismiss attendees who aren’t required to answer questions and add additional questions to the meeting based on your team’s needs.

Pricing:

• $1/month (per participant)

4Kyber

Features:

Coordinate your teamwork and run asynchronous daily scrums in Slack with Kyber. With this integration, you get a suite of Slack apps to help your team work better on functions including automated daily standups, task and project management, message scheduling, polls, surveys, and personal to-dos. 

Pricing:

• Startup – $0/month per user (for five people or less)
• Team – $3/month per user
• Enterprise – $9/month per user

5GeekBot

Features:

With Geekbot, your team and other departments within your organization are able to conduct multiple asynchronous daily standups. Team members answer questions delivered by the bot and answers become available on specified Slack channels for better cross-departmental communication and collaboration. Unique features include setting the mood of your bot to casual or serious and including a transparent work status for your colleagues to see. 

Pricing:

• Start-up – $0/month (up to 10 participants)
• Scale-up – $2.50/month (billed annually per participant)
• Enterprise – custom pricing 

6Standup & Prosper

Features: 

This Slack integration lets you run asynchronous standup meetings for your remote team in a simple and reliable manner. To use Standup & Prosper, you first select your Slack channel, choose your daily scrum schedule, and use the platform’s default standup meeting questions or enter your own to conduct the standup. Once you hold the meeting, you report your daily scrum to the bot and each teammate’s answers get posted to your channel in a neat thread. 

Pricing:

• Standup Community – $0/month 
• Support Standard – $1/month (per user)
• Prosper Premium – $200/month (per team of up to 50 users)

7Standup Alice 

Features: 

Standup Alice is another Slack integration that allows you to run hassle-free daily scrums to boost your team’s productivity. Using this app, you select a Slack channel and participants, draft questions for your meeting, and assign a standup time. Alice, the platform’s bot, then sends you customizable meeting reminders. Once your teammates have answered the standup questions at a time most convenient for them, Alice sends a report that summarizes the day’s scrum. 

Pricing:

• Monthly – $0.99/month (per user)
• Annual – $9.99/year (per user)

8Standup Buddy

Features: 

Set up your daily standup with four clicks using Standup Buddy. Once you add the application to your Slack workspace, you can create a standup by selecting a channel to broadcast daily reports. Once you add a channel, you may run your daily scrums. After everyone has completed their daily report, they’re posted on the specified Slack channel for all participants to see. Additionally, the platform emphasizes privacy by using servers that communicate with Slack through encrypted channels so your data is secure.  

Pricing:

• Basic – $19/month (up to 20 participants)
• Premium – $49/month (up to 50 participants)
• Enterprise – $129/month (up to 200 participants)

9Polly

Features: 

Polly is an integration designed to capture instant feedback on multiple platforms including Slack. Users are able to send surveys called “pollys” to receive responses, anonymously or voluntarily, within seconds. With the app’s 30+ templates, you can easily complete remote team check-ins and send meeting feedback in addition to conducting your daily standups. You can target individuals by sending direct messages within a Slack channel for speedier replies and even send different types of questions like multiple choice and rating scales for close-ended questions. If you prefer to stick to the typical three open-ended questions for your scrums, you can do that as well. 

Pricing:

• Free – $0/month
• Standard – $49/month (3-month subscription)
• Pro – $19/month (6 and 12-month subscriptions)
• Enterprise – custom pricing 

10Standup Jack

Features: 

Standup Jack is a Slack bot designed to help plan your day and keep your teammates in the loop. Upon integrating the tool to your Slack account, Jack, the platform’s bot, will prompt you to choose a time for your daily standup, invite attendees, and ask where you would like to post scrum updates. The bot then introduces himself to the members of your team who were invited and prompts them to give their updates. Jack’s questions are designed to keep your teammates up to date with the progress of deliverables. Once weekly at a specified time, the bot will post each person’s responses to the Slack channel you’ve selected.

Pricing:

• Standard – $1/month (per user)

Unproductive standups no more!

Take a moment and ask yourself: Does the way my team currently runs daily scrums add value to our team? Does it improve our workflow? Is it time well spent? If you answered yes to all three questions, congratulations! You have a daily standup process that makes your life easier. If not, it’s time to have a conversation with your colleagues and find a better solution. 

Say goodbye to eye rolls, sighs, and repetitive reporting at your daily scrums. If you’re already using Slack, there’s no need to gather in the Zoom room to answer three (or more) simple questions. Automate the process using Slack apps to keep each other in the loop with new projects, communicate roadblocks, and share quick feedback with your colleagues. 

Remember: teams who automate, dominate.