5 Ways to Add More Fun to Your Team’s Daily Huddle

Keisha Follins
Dotdash Meredith Tech Blog
3 min readJan 3, 2019

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Going to a daily huddle (or stand-up*) can get stale pretty quickly: the same people, same topics at the same time — eeeeevery day. It doesn’t have to be that way though! Even if you work in the most corporate of environments, you can add a little fun to your daily meeting. Adults truly are just big kids and any way you can channel your inner five-year-old is bound to make stand-ups more interesting. Here are five ways I’ve found to inject more fun into stand-ups whether you’re a Scrum Master, a product manager, or a team member. They can be used during “parking lot” time or at the beginning or end of a stand-up.

  1. Daily Alliteration

A little alliteration never hurt anybody and it’s an easy way to end your stand-ups. You can start with: “Have a marvelous Monday, everyone, “ follow it up with “All of you have a thrilling Tuesday,” and then maybe an “Everyone enjoy a woohoo Wednesday.” When I started doing this, I didn’t announce it to my teams and once they started to catch on they began to look forward to hearing the word of the day. One even cracked: “When you’re not here, I don’t know what day it is.” As you begin to run of out words, you can use portmanteaus like “fantabulous” or even start borrowing from other languages.

2. Riddles & Brain Teasers

Between Tuesdays and Thursdays (two ‘T’ days), you can run out of positive alliterative adjectives pretty quickly. To switch things up, throw in a “Riddle Me THis THursday (notice there’s still a nod to the theme of alliteration) or a “Brain Teaser Tuesday.” Everyone’s favorite search friend, Google, can provide you with plenty of material! Vary the level of difficulty if you really want to stump everyone.

3. Fun Facts and Trivia

Try a Fun Fact Friday, Wow! Wednesday, or Trivia Tuesday (again with the alliteration). Did you know that there’s a German word that essentially translates to “grief bacon” (kummerspeck)? Neither did I until I started researching fun facts to share with my teams. It’s the perfect way to learn something new and delight stand-up participants. Sometimes during the week I’ll come across a fascinating tidbit and jot it down to share later.

4. Question of the Day (QOTD)

End your huddle with a fun, thought-provoking, would you rather, topical, or inspirational question that everyone can take turns answering. It presents a good opportunity to learn something new about each other. Team members can alternate who comes up with the QOTD.

A wooden table topped with illuminated light fixtures. The fixtures are overlayed with question marks in the style of Super Mario Brothers.
Photo by Kacper Peciak on Unsplash

5. Social Chatter

This one’s easy: talk to each other. A groundbreaking concept; I know! On a Monday, ask about each others’ weekend (but, don’t pry; read the room!). At the end of the week, maybe ask someone to share a highlight of their week. The more human we act with each other, the more relatable we become, leaving space for camaraderie to develop and fostering a sense of trust— an important element to team health.

While these techniques add levity to daily stand-ups, they also help keep attendees engaged and can help make huddles meetings people don’t dread attending. If you try some of these out or use other techniques to liven up your stand-ups, please share them below!

*In 2021, we moved away from using the term “stand-up” in favor of the more inclusive term “huddle.”

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Director of Agile Program Management @ Dotdash. Over 15 years in project & program management at tech companies in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York.