How it works
How an async standup works when it is only three lines
The daily standup was meant to take a few minutes. In most teams it grows: someone explains a bug in detail, two people solve a problem while six watch, and a quarter of an hour is gone for everyone.
Moving it to writing helps, until the written updates grow too. Long updates do not get read, and the one line that mattered, "I am stuck", is lost in the middle.
tblip fixes the shape instead of the schedule. A blip is a small signal: three lines, each with a hard limit. The name is short for team blip, and the three colours of the bolt are the three lines.
One blip, in full
- Done Shipped the invoice export, CSV and PDF
- Next Starting the refund flow
- Blocked Need the payment sandbox keys from finance
A written sample. That is the whole update.
What your standup takes from the team
A meeting costs its length multiplied by everyone in it. Put in your own numbers.
Team time per day
Standup meeting 90 min
Blips, written and read 9 min
- Meeting, per week
- 7.5 h
- Blips, per week
- 0.8 h
- Meeting, per year
- 360 h · at that hourly cost
Assumes 5 working days a week and 48 working weeks a year. The blip figure is an estimate: 30 seconds to write one and 1 minute to read the feed, per person. Time yourself in the demo to check the first number.
Five rules the product follows
-
1
Three lines, never four
Done, next, blocked. If something does not fit in one of them, it belongs in a ticket or a conversation, not in a status update.
-
2
80 characters and stop
The limit is the feature. It forces the one thing that matters onto the line and leaves the rest out.
-
3
Blockers are read first
A blocked line moves that blip to the top of the feed. Nobody has to scan for the person who needs help.
-
4
One form, not a conversation
Three boxes on one screen. No bot asking a question, waiting, then asking the next one.
-
5
An empty line is an answer
Nothing blocked? Leave it empty. The product should never make people invent filler to get past a field.
Questions about how it works
How does an async standup work?
Each person writes a short update at the start of their own working day instead of joining a call. The updates are collected in one place and the team reads them when it suits them.
What is a blip?
A blip is one person's update: three lines for done, next and blocked, each at most 80 characters. The name tblip is short for team blip.
What happens when someone is blocked?
Their blip is shown at the top of the team feed with a pink Blocked mark, so the people who can help see it first.
Is tblip available now?
No. tblip is in development. This page describes how it is designed to work, and the demo on the home page shows the format.