Say what you finished, not what you did.
How to make your work visible and stand out at your daily stand-up
Hey I’m back! I was away on vacation for a spell and out sick too. I hope the weather is getting nicer for you. In Stockholm, it’s a chilly Spring.
I also hope this week’s post helps reinforce some positive habit-building we sometimes lose after our New Year’s Resolutions begin to wear off. Happy Patriot’s Day/Marathon Monday if you’re in Boston. Don’t forget to file your taxes if you’re in the US.
-Mat
“Everybody talks, everybody talks,
Everybody talks too much”
Neon Trees, Everybody Talks
The problem with stand-ups
Most designers have experienced a daily check-in or stand-up meeting1.
The purpose of most stand-ups is to understand a team’s progress; how close is a project to being done? That’s it. Nothing more.
However, with the rapid rise of remote work, I’ve seen a lot of stand-ups devolve into rambling lists of tasks, social updates, project discussions, and wandering topics. Often, a simple 15-minute update turns into a 45- or 60-minute meeting, wasting people’s time.
Why does this happen? First, working remotely (or in siloes) has starved us for social connection, but socializing is not the focus of a stand-up meeting. Second, most companies still haven’t developed good practices for remote working and don’t provide necessary structure to support social updates, project discussions, and other outlets people need.
So more and more, teams turn the daily stand-up into the everything meeting. Instead of a quick update, people spend time recounting everything they did the day before.
Don’t fall into the trap of describing what you did.
The truth is, people don’t care what you did yesterday or even what you might do today. They care about what’s finished. They care about how close the project is to done.
Regardless of how your stand-ups are structured2, what your boss and team need to know most is: what did you get done?
37 Signals framed it best in the book, Remote:
“When you can’t see someone all day long, the only thing you have to evaluate is the work. [...] So instead of asking a remote worker ‘what did you do today?’ you can now just say ‘show me what you did today.’”
So make it easy for people to see what you got done, not what you did.
A framework to communicate better
As a designer, showing what you did should be easy because our work produces artefacts (Eg. A sketch, a document, a line of code, a design, etc.). So make your work visible to the team even if you don’t show your work during stand-up.
Here’s a simple four question stand-up framework to make your work known to everyone:
✅ Done. What did you finish yesterday?
🆕 New. What new information did you learn impacting the project?
🔲 Today. What will you finish today?
🚫 Blockers. What is blocking you from moving the project forward?
Let’s unpack all four…
1. ✅ What did you finish yesterday?
Focus on what is done. Done means the project made progress by a measurable amount. As a designer, you should have an artefact. Share your work and explain how it moves the project closer to completion.
If you didn’t finish anything, be honest. Admitting you didn’t finish anything will incentivize you to break your work into smaller pieces (daily/hourly chunks) to fit the daily check-in routine. Breaking down a project into parts is a critical skill to cultivate as a designer.
Example:
I sketched the new landing page to inform the wireframe I’ll share a link after stand-up.
I explored three distinct concepts. Review them here (link).
I wrote a design brief. Here’s a link to the document for review.
I edited the CSS for our website. Here’s a link to view the result.
I sent three high-fidelity designs to marketing for sign-off.
2. 🆕 What new information did you learn?
Share what changed. Did you receive feedback changing the scope of the project? Was an issue delaying your work? Did someone ask you to do something unplanned? Update the team on new information; especially scope changes impacting the project’s timeline.
Sharing new information has two key benefits:
Sharing makes extra work visible to everyone. Additional work requests go unnoticed by your boss or the rest of the team unless you speak up. When new requests aren’t made visible to people they will assume you are slow.
Communicating changes lessens the burden on you. Instead of all work falling on your shoulders, sharing allows the team to offer help, reject changes, or reprioritize work based on the new information. You also avoid starting work your boss or your team don’t want you to do.
Example:
Marketing asked me for three new versions of the product display ad due today.
Our design system team asked me to create documentation for our new feature.
John from sales asked for an updated sales deck slide for the new feature launch.
Yesterday IT made me install system updates forcing me to re-install and update design applications critical to finishing this work.
Yesterday the VP of product asked for a working design prototype they could test on their phone which will take two days of work to finish.
3. 🔲 What will you finish today?
Under promise and over deliver. To quote Basecamp CEO Jason Fried, “A kick-ass half is better than a half-assed whole.” Make the room to deliver something high quality even if it’s a small amount of work. Your team (or boss) will speak up if they need you to get more done.
A good question I like to ask myself: “If I could only deliver one thing today, what would make the biggest impact on moving my project forward?”
Example:
I’ll finish the wireframe for the landing page and share a link for review.
I will finish three distinct concepts. And send an update to the team for feedback.
I will write a brief proposing a design direction and send it to the team for comments.
I will experiment with the animation timing for our website home page and send the values to engineering.
I will send final image assets to the marketing team and will CC the team.
4. 🚫 What is blocking you from moving the project forward?
Speak up or say “no blockers.” If you are waiting on someone else you need the team to know. Similar to making invisible work visible, people need to know you’re blocked or they can’t help. You don’t need to blame anyone, just state the facts. (Eg. The design is waiting on the product manager to approve before it can be sent to engineering.)
Example:
I’m blocked on sending the design to engineering because we don’t have sign-off on the copywriting.
I’m blocked from moving to the next project because I’m waiting on Marketing to approve assets.
I’m blocked from finalizing the design pending approval from our design systems team.
No blockers.
— ❦ —
How to put this into practice
Your stand-up is a chance to form good habits
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.”
– Aristotle
Anything you do daily becomes a habit. Make sure your daily work habits support the behaviors you need to advance your career.
Every career framework for designers has some variation of: Transparent Communication and/or Effective Collaboration listed as key behaviors for promotion. Your daily stand-up is the place for you to both cultivate and showcase your ability.
How to build your daily habit:
Before stand-up: Write your answers to the four question stand-up framework and be prepared to share your work.
During stand-up: Share your update. Be clear. Be brief.
After stand-up: Send a quick bulleted list of your update to your manager with links to the work.
I have never met a manager (designer or non-designer) who didn’t appreciate a focused daily update.
Have an awesome week,
Mat
If you haven’t learn more from this blog post from the folks at Figma.
P.S. If sharing a social update is a part of your team ritual, I’m not advocating to be anti-social, but keep it brief. No one wants to hear about your vacation unless you had a moment of transformation.