Meeting Timer

A standup is a daily habit, not a status meeting. The whole point is to sync quickly so the team can get back to work. When standups drift past fifteen minutes, they stop paying for themselves.

The fastest way to fix a sprawling standup is to put a visible timer on the screen. A clock that everyone can see shifts the pressure from the facilitator (“we need to keep moving”) onto a neutral object. Nobody feels cut off by a ding.

Ninety seconds or two minutes per person?

Two minutes is the sweet spot for most teams. Under ninety seconds people either rush or stop bothering. Over three minutes and the standup stops being standing. If you have more than eight people, split into smaller squads rather than racing the clock.

Why shuffle the order?

When the order is fixed, the first person gets more time to prepare and the last person gets less attention. Shuffling every day evens out the energy and makes sure the quieter people at the end of the alphabet are not always going last.

Does the ding still count if someone is still talking?

The ding is a nudge, not a hard stop. Let people finish their sentence. If the same person is going over by a minute every day, the issue is not the timer. It's the shape of the conversation, and that belongs in a 1:1, not the standup.

What if we're remote?

The timer goes into fullscreen on whoever is sharing their screen. A big shared clock works better than individual timers because the whole team sees the same signal. Pair it with the round-robin mode so everyone knows who's next without anyone having to chair.

Beyond standups

The same round-robin mode fits workshop timeboxes, lightning talks, conference Q&A, icebreaker rounds, classroom presentations, and demo days. Anywhere a group takes turns speaking in fixed slots, the shared timer is the piece that saves everyone from the uncomfortable job of cutting people off.