Danilo Assis

Posted on May 31, 2021 • Edited on Oct 1

Getting Ready for Daily Meeting

#webdev #programmers #programming #management

TL;DR

This is not a rulebook. It’s a personal practice that helped me feel more prepared for daily meetings and avoid unhelpful, boring behavior that wasn’t adding value to my team. It might help you, too—or not. Take it as an idea to experiment with, not a rule to follow.

The Most Common Struggle in Dailies

Have you ever completely “forgotten” what you did yesterday during a daily meeting?
I’ve been there too.

It’s surprisingly easy to get lost when it’s your turn to share. You know you did things, but suddenly your mind goes blank. Over time, I realized this is normal—especially for newer team members.

I started to think: if so many people struggle with this, how do they get past it? Since I believe in learning in public, I decided to share what worked for me.

Start by Listening

One of the best pieces of advice I’ve heard about daily meetings is this: it’s not only about listing what you did yesterday. It’s about selling your work to the team.

Even a small task can make a difference. If you explain how your work connects to the team’s goals—whether technical improvements, product needs, or even something that supports the sales team—people can better understand the impact of what you do.

What I Did

The team I was in worked with weekly milestones, and each day we held daily standups to check on progress. Pretty standard Scrum. In these meetings, blockers were always highlighted first so others could help quickly. Everything else flowed naturally from there.

To avoid forgetting my updates, I started keeping daily notes:

I kept a list of everything I was working on.
I wrote down what I completed, sometimes with extra detail.
I split notes by month, then by week (aligned with milestones), and then by day.

Here’s a simplified example:

OCTOBER

Milestone 05–09

TRACK ISSUES

github.com/example/fullstack-playground/issues/1
github.com/example/fullstack-playground/issues/2

DOING

Implement feature Y related to issue #1

07/10

Decided in daily to fix new use case in issue #2
Started implementing onboarding feature for institutional site

06/10

Improved deployment with GitHub Actions
Enhanced file processing with Thumbor
Finished new front-end module XYZ

For next daily: bring discussion on how to resolve a new use case found in front-end XYZ.

05/10

Improved feature A
Fixed navbar icon
Adjusted responsiveness on the institutional website

Conclusion

Here’s why this approach worked for me:

Milestone links – Easy reference to remember what the sprint is about.
Tracking new issues – Helps keep visibility of new work discovered during the sprint.
Clear “Doing” section – Simple snapshot of current focus.
Daily notes – A record of progress and new cases to bring up in the next daily.

This might look like extra effort, but it turned out to be simple and powerful. By writing things down, I was never caught off guard when it was my turn to share.

Final Thoughts

This might not sound like a big deal, but in daily meetings, you should show the value of your work. People who communicate their contributions clearly tend to grow faster, get promoted more often, and gain visibility.

Yes, it may sound a bit “coaching-like” or even obvious. But what’s obvious for one person might not be obvious for another.

Do you use something similar? Or do you have a different approach? Share it—after all, the more we learn in public, the more everyone grows.

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