Standups | Notion

Even more important than being able to complete your work, is being able to communicate about how your work is going. (Even if you’re behind schedule!) Your performance will be largely evaluated based on communication.

One way that most companies communicate is through frequent “stand-ups”, where you share your answer to the following questions with your team:

What did you do recently?
What are you planning to do next?
Is anything blocking you?

Your answers to these questions are not meant to “grade” you, but to help your team (and manager) collaborate.

Scoring

The CodeDay Labs team reads your standup responses and classifies them into one of the following categories:

0: Did not submit a standup

<aside> 👉 Standups are an important part of CodeDay Labs and if you regularly fail to complete them, you may be removed.

</aside>

1: Vague. (Not clear or measurable. For each task you list, we should be able to say whether it is complete or not with a firm “yes” or “no”.)

<aside> 👉 “1” responses often just say “learn [technology]” or “I will look into [bug]” with no real details.

</aside>

2: Detailed, but does not appear to represent anywhere near enough work for the amount of time you should have put in.

<aside> 👉 “2” responses often just list a small task (like reading a class or attending a meeting).

</aside>

3: Detailed and represents enough work.

Scrum update	Score	Reasoning
“Learning about react”	1	Vague. If someone asks you tomorrow whether you finished the task, it’s not easy to answer the question with a clear yes or no. There’s always more to learn and react is a huge topic.
“Going through section 3.1 of this react tutorial: [link]. Learning about react hooks.”	2	Clear. Much easier to answer with a definite yes or no to measure whether the task is completed or not.
But this probably doesn’t take 4 hours to complete. Plus, usually you don’t want “research” to be the only thing you accomplished that day.
“Going through section 3.1 of this react tutorial. Learning about react hooks. Built out the sample tic-tac-toe demo alongside the tutorial.”	3	Clear. Plus, the fact that you built something usually requires at least 3-4 hours.

If you’re consistently receiving ratings below 3, we will reach out to you.

Examples

(Credit to Utsab Saha from CTI for these examples.)

Example 1

Example 2

Scrum Update	Score	Reasoning
“Met with mentor today”	1	Too vague.
“Met with our mentor today. Discussed X, Y, Z”	2	Clear. But ideally you accomplish more that day than attending your mentor meeting
“Met with our mentor today. Discussed X, Y, Z. Mentor recommended we post for help on the project’s Discord channel. I crafted a sample write-up for the question I want to post and sent it to my mentor for feedback.”	3	Clear. Plus, the fact that you took action on the mentor’s feedback is a solid outcome for the day.

Example 3