Standup — The Daily Fifteen Minutes
A daily standup game: five things get said to you, three ways to answer each, one shareable grid. Same standup for everyone that day. Play today's in a minute.
Five things to answer. The same five everyone else gets today.
How to play
- Five things get said to you. You pick what you say back. There is one good answer each time.
- Say what changed and say what is blocking you. Being vague costs trust; letting the meeting take your day costs the work.
- Same standup for everyone, one a day, no retries. Come back tomorrow for a different one.
How it works
One standup a day, and it is the same standup everyone else gets. Five things get said to you and you choose what you say back. There is a right answer every time and it is easier to miss than it looks, because the two ways of getting it wrong both feel safer in the moment: being vague so nobody digs, or narrating the whole investigation at nine in the morning. The first costs you the team's trust; the second costs the work its day. The rule is the one you already half-know — say what changed, say what is blocking you, stop — and the game is finding out how hard that is under mild social pressure. It resets at midnight, your grid is comparable with everyone else's, and there is no replay button, because a daily you can retry is not a daily. Runs on your device, nothing is sent anywhere, and there is nothing to sign up for.
A game about a meeting, not management advice. Real standups have more than three options and usually run long.
Frequently asked questions
Is it the same for everyone?
Yes. The standup is derived from the date itself, not from a random number, so everyone playing on the same calendar day gets the same five exchanges. It is seeded from the date string rather than a timestamp, so somebody in Auckland and somebody in Lisbon on the same date get the same one — which is the only way the shared grid means anything.
Why is there no play-again button?
Because a daily you can retry is not a daily. The grid you post is only worth posting if it cost you something, and being able to reroll until it is all green would make it worth nothing. Come back tomorrow — there is a different standup waiting.
What are the two meters?
Trust is whether the team believes what you say. Shipped is whether the work actually moved. The two ways of failing hit different meters on purpose: burying a blocker to look productive costs trust, and turning the meeting into a design review costs the day. If both failures cost the same thing, there would only be one lesson.
Is there really always a right answer?
In this game, yes — each exchange offers exactly one reply that is both honest and short, and the tests check that no failing reply ever beats it on both meters. Real standups are messier. The point is not that the rule is complete, it is that the rule is easy to state and hard to follow.