Async Standups

Async standups let your team share daily or weekly updates without scheduling a synchronous meeting. Team members respond on their own time, and Unpack collects everything into a single view with AI-powered summaries that surface blockers and patterns.

Creating a standup

Any team admin or facilitator can create a standup for their team. Standups can be one-off or recurring, depending on your team's cadence.

1. Navigate to your team dashboard and click New Standup in the ceremonies panel.
2. Give the standup a title. For recurring standups, a descriptive name like "Monday Check-in" or "Mid-week Sync" helps team members know which standup they are responding to.
3. Choose the response window — the period during which team members can submit their updates. Common windows are 24 hours for daily standups or 48 hours for less frequent check-ins.
4. Optionally link the standup to the current sprint. Linked standups contribute their themes to the sprint's retrospective automatically.
5. Click Start Standup. All team members are notified and can begin submitting their responses immediately.

Standup responses

Each standup collects three types of information from every team member. These prompts are designed to be quick to answer while capturing the most useful signal for the team.

What I did

A brief summary of completed work since the last check-in. This does not need to be an exhaustive list — focus on the most significant accomplishments or progress milestones. One to three bullet points is typical.

What I'm doing

What you plan to work on next. This helps teammates understand your current focus and spot opportunities for collaboration or potential conflicts early.

Blockers

Anything preventing you from making progress. Blockers are highlighted in the standup summary and flagged on the team dashboard so they get visibility quickly. If you have no blockers, you can leave this field empty.

Submitting and editing responses

Click Submit Response when your update is ready. You can edit your response at any time while the standup is still open. Once the standup is closed, responses are locked and become part of the historical record.

The standup view updates in real time as teammates submit their responses. You can see who has responded and who is still pending without refreshing the page.

AI summaries

Once a standup has enough responses, Unpack generates an AI-powered summary that distills the team's updates into a concise overview. The summary includes:

• Key accomplishments — a consolidated view of what the team completed, grouped by theme rather than by individual.
• Active work streams — a snapshot of where the team's effort is currently focused, helping managers and stakeholders understand priorities at a glance.
• Blocker report — all reported blockers collected in one place with suggested owners or resolution paths when the AI can identify them.
• Emerging themes — patterns the AI detects across multiple responses, such as several team members mentioning the same dependency, tool issue, or process friction.

Closing a standup

Standups can be closed manually by a team admin or facilitator, or automatically when the response window expires. Closing a standup triggers several actions:

1. All responses are locked and can no longer be edited.
2. The final AI summary is generated, incorporating all submitted responses.
3. Detected themes are saved and made available for retro bridging.
4. A completion notification is sent to the team with a link to the summary.

To close a standup manually, open the standup and click Close Standup in the header bar. You will see a confirmation dialog showing how many team members have not yet responded.

Standup-to-retro theme bridging

Theme bridging is one of Unpack's most powerful features. It connects the patterns identified in your standups to your retrospectives, creating a data-informed starting point for reflection.

How it works

When you create a retrospective linked to a sprint, Unpack looks at all closed standups from that sprint and collects their detected themes. These themes are then presented to the facilitator as suggested cards or discussion topics during retro setup.

1. Themes from standups are ranked by frequency — issues mentioned across multiple standups appear first.
2. The facilitator reviews the suggested themes and can accept, edit, or dismiss each one.
3. Accepted themes are added as pre-populated cards in the appropriate retro column, giving the team a head start on reflection.

Benefits of theme bridging

• Retrospectives start with real data rather than blank boards.
• Recurring issues that surface across multiple standups get the attention they deserve.
• Team members see that their standup feedback is actually used, which improves standup participation over time.
• Facilitators spend less time warming up the team and more time on meaningful discussion.