Daily standup email templates
Three you can copy now, for the three situations that actually come up. Take them and go; there is a note at the end about not having to send them at all.
1. The individual update
What one person sends, or replies with. Keep it to what changed.
Subject: Standup — 23 Oct Done yesterday - Shipped the billing migration and backfilled the old rows - Reviewed the search PR On today - Inbound email parser, second half - Pairing with Ada at 14:00 on the calendar bug Blocked - Nothing. (Or: waiting on staging access from IT.)
2. The team thread
One person opens it, everyone replies. Works in any mail client.
Subject: Standup thread — week of 23 Oct Reply to this with your update whenever you start. No need to read the whole thread first. Format, loosely: Done — Today — Blocked —
3. The manager summary
Upwards, weekly. Written from the team's updates, not instead of them.
Subject: 23 Oct — what the team shipped Shipped - Billing migration (Ada, Grace) - Search relevance fix, 40% fewer empty results (Kai) In progress - Inbound email parser — on track for Thursday Needs a decision - Staging access for contractors: blocked two people this week
Writing one that gets read
- Name the outcome, not the activity. "Backfilled 1 200 rows" beats "worked on the migration".
- Say "nothing" under blocked when nothing is blocked. An empty field reads as unanswered.
- Keep it under a screen. A standup nobody finishes reading is a meeting with extra steps.
The version that writes itself
The trouble with a template is that somebody has to remember to use it. That is the part that lapses, usually in week three.
Donelane sends the email for you: a digest of yesterday lands each morning, and anyone can reply to it with what they got done. The reply becomes the record — no template to paste, no thread to maintain. Free for a first team of three.