Best Time to Schedule Daily Standups for Global Teams

The Impossible Triangle

India (IST), UK (GMT/BST), and US East (EST/EDT). You're looking at a 10.5-hour spread. Someone's standup will be at a weird time. There's no perfect answer — but there's a fair one.

Option 1: The Rotating Standup (Most Fair)

Each team gets the bad slot once every 3 weeks. Use ClockHive's Meeting Planner to visualize these windows.

Option 2: Async Standups (Most Practical)

This is what most mature distributed teams actually do:

1. Everyone posts their update in Slack/Teams by 10 AM their local time
2. Format: "Yesterday I did X. Today I'm doing Y. Blocked on Z."
3. Scrum Master reviews at a consistent UTC time and flags blockers
4. Optional 15-min sync for people who need real-time discussion

Option 3: Split Standups

One standup for APAC+EMEA, one for EMEA+Americas. The EMEA team acts as the bridge. Not elegant, but it works.