Keeping your team coordinated

Teamwork doesn’t happen without coordination. Imagine a bunch of people walking around a pitch black room. How would they move without bumping into each other? They’d talk. Specifically, they’d start coordinating by verbalizing what they intend to do so people around them can act accordingly.

That pitch black room is your team whenever you’re not working shoulder-to-shoulder. The way you coordinate? Status updates. All to say, status updates are important. But that doesn't mean they need to be time-consuming or tedious. Enter Steady and Smart Check-ins.

Smart Check-ins are one of the core tools in Steady. Their purpose; keep individual teams in tight sync without daily stand-ups or status meetings. Here’s how they work:

• ⏰ People get reminders to check in via email, Slack, or Teams.
• 🤔 They answer three key questions; what they worked on previously, what they’re working on next, and if they’re blocked or not. An activity-aware, AI-enhanced editor makes reporting on progress fast.
• 🤖 Steady adds relevant activity from connected tools, and pushes the check-ins to their teammates. Team Highlights summarize what’s next so that everyone can get up to speed on the broad strokes in seconds.

That’s all there is to it. No standups or status meetings, no missing context, no having to remind people for updates. Just complete context, in minutes a day.

The questions

The three questions that Steady asks are the fastest and simplest way for your team to share progress, plans, and blockers. With just a few sentences or bullets, you'll know what they accomplished, where they're focused, and if they need help.

The default questions are:

1. What did you do previously? This is where your team shares what they've accomplished since the last check-in. Quick Fill will automatically update their previous intentions and pull in activity from tools like GitHub, GitLab, Jira, Linear, and Asana, saving them time.
2. What do you intend to do next? Here's where they share what they plan to accomplish before the next check-in. By sharing intentions proactively, you as a manager can provide feedback and course correct before any problems come up. Setting intentions also encourages big picture prioritization and increases ownership and autonomy on your team.
3. Are you blocked by anything? This is where team members can surface anything that is blocking them. You'll receive notifications when a blocker is entered so you can respond and unblock them fast so they can get back on track.