Async video standups: how to run one, with a template

An async video standup is a daily standup without the meeting. Each person records a one- to two-minute update when their day starts, the team watches by an agreed time, and whoever can clear a blocker contacts that person directly. A typical update sounds like this:

Developer, 1:20. "Yesterday I finished the user profile API endpoints; they're merged and on staging. Today I'm starting the profile edit form that uses them. No blockers, though I may need a design review of the form layout this afternoon."

The Scrum Guide describes the Daily Scrum as a 15-minute event at the same time and place every working day. An async standup keeps its purpose, checking progress and adjusting the plan, and drops the shared slot. In Capme Meetings it becomes an agenda with one topic per person and a deadline; for a daily standup, record at capme.app/studio and post the file.

An async standup is worth it when people have no morning in common or when the call breaks up focused work. Its job is to tell everyone where work stands, which puts it among the meetings that can go async. A team spread from San Francisco to Berlin has no shared morning: 9 a.m. in San Francisco is 6 p.m. in Berlin. With recordings, everyone speaks in their own morning and watches the others in theirs. To see how much of your year the daily call takes, count your standing meetings.

A standup at half past nine also splits everyone's morning at once. Gloria Mark, who studies interruptions at UC Irvine, told the Gallup Business Journal that most interrupted work in her 2005 field study was picked up again the same day, and "it was resumed, on average, in 23 minutes and 15 seconds". A recording can be made before focused work starts and watched in a break.

The minutes themselves are close. Take eight people. A 15-minute call costs 8 × 15 = 120 person-minutes a day. Async, each person records once and watches the seven others: at 1:20 per update that is 8 × 80 s recorded plus 56 × 80 s watched, about 85 person-minutes; at two minutes it is 64 × 2 = 128, more than the call. This assumes everyone watches every update in full and ignores retakes. Watching is the part to cut: if everyone watches only the three updates that touch their work, it is 8 × 80 s + 24 × 80 s, about 43 person-minutes.

We think the case for async rests on the unbroken morning and the time zones, because the minutes only fall when updates stay short.

Video carries how something is said, which a written update loses. "Waiting on API access" reads the same after an hour and after a week; spoken, you can usually hear which it is. Video also shows the thing: ten seconds of a failing test replaces a paragraph.

Text is enough when the whole update fits in one sentence with nothing to explain, such as a merged pull request. Replacing the weekly status meeting takes a longer update with a different shape.

Each update answers three questions in one to two minutes. The 2020 Scrum Guide removed them as a requirement and leaves the format to the team, but as a template they still work.

Name results and the pull request or ticket. "The login fix is in production" tells the team more than "worked on auth stuff"; "migration half done, nothing shippable yet" is useful too.

Say it so a colleague knows where to find you: "dashboard load time", not "various things". If your day is mostly meetings, say that too.

Say what you need and from whom: "API access from ops, requested on Monday".

Product manager, 0:50. "Yesterday was sprint planning. Today I have the customer call at two, then I'm finishing the notification requirements. One blocker: the legal review of the new terms is still open and holds up the settings page. Sarah, any update on the timeline would help."

Async standups run on three kinds of tool: a chat bot that collects written answers, a screen recorder plus a shared channel, or an agenda tool that collects recordings per person. As their own sites described them on 5 October 2026, Geekbot runs standups, polls and surveys in Slack and Microsoft Teams; Standup Alice works in Microsoft Teams, Slack, Cisco Webex and Google Chat and reminds people to post their answers; Standuply works in Slack and Microsoft Teams and lets people attach voice or video messages to a report. If a bot already runs your standup in Teams or Slack, keep it for one-line answers and record only on days with something to show.

In Capme a standup is a meeting with an agenda. Take Monday's standup for six people. The organiser writes six topics, one speaker each, a time budget of two minutes (up to 30 is possible) and a deadline of 10:00 Berlin time. Team holds up to 25 topics, and every speaker must be a member of the workspace.

Each speaker gets one email with a link, records in the browser with camera, screen or both, and sends. The recorder shows the time left and keeps recording past the budget. At 10:05 the organiser sees four updates in and two missing, and can remind those two or everybody.

The organiser publishes, and the team gets one page with a chapter per person, listed with name and length. It plays in order and resumes where each viewer stopped; a click opens any chapter. As checked in our code on 5 October 2026, a topic counts as watched at 75 %. By default the organiser sees who has watched, who only opened it and who has not; an admin can switch the workspace to totals only, and then the organiser sees names and one line of totals. Viewers can get one reminder if the organiser switches it on, after 3, 7 or 14 days. Viewers are free.

Capme has no repeating meeting, so each standup is a meeting of its own and the agenda is set up every time. That pays off when the standup runs once or twice a week. For a daily one the free recorder is lighter: everyone records at capme.app/studio, saves the file (the first save asks for an email address) and posts it in the channel. That works on Free, without agenda, reminders or watch progress.

Meetings come with Team at 12 € per speaker a month, from 3 speakers, as of October 2026. Recordings live in EU hosting, or in your own bucket on the higher plans. A 14-day company trial includes meetings and needs no card; start it from the pricing page.

An async standup does not work for a small team in one place that actually solves problems together in the standup; keep that one live. A blocker a colleague could clear in one sentence waits hours, two people building the same thing find out later, and the daily small talk goes, which only a regular informal call brings back.

A production incident belongs in neither format; it needs a call or a page at once. For other meeting types, see which meetings can go async.

Software that shows per person who watched whose update is a technical device for monitoring under § 87 (1) no. 6 BetrVG, so the works council co-determines it. Settle the watch-progress setting with them before day one: the Trust Center has a document written for them, and what the works council decides on helps with the talks.

Write the four agreements from the top of this page into one message and send it to one team that feels the problem, for example this one: