Meetings
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Don't call a meeting if the same result could be achieved with an email (or another less-intensive action)
Add meetings to your and invite all participants
Every meeting should have an agenda - try to circulate at least a day in advance
Make the meeting default length 30 minutes, and increase or decrease as needed
Stick to your time limits!
Keep minutes of your meeting
Every meeting should produce a list of next actions and the people responsible for that work
You may want to decide when the next meeting will be
Circulate minutes and action lists to all participants afterwards
Keep a record of the minutes and action lists in the appropriate project folder
Read more on how to get the best out of meetings .
to be on time
to commit to meetings at least 2 days in advance (don't expect people to always be available)
to stick to the times set.
If they can't commit to the third bullet point, to inform the other members of the meeting beforehand.
Shaun R: While meetings are important for planning, (this is probably my strongest philosophy for planning) meetings aren’t work. Don’t see a meeting as work.
There must always be a list of outcomes from a meeting.
Take minutes. Make sure the most important parts come through.
Task list- who is doing what, and when are they doing it by.
Last thing: try setting the next meeting at the end of the meeting, since you don't know when you’ll have that same group of people together in a room again, and that can be quite difficult.
Jen W: Meetings is a big word for me. So I see there are many different types of communications that need to happen. Some are shared working sessions, like running a workshop, and that’s typically to kind of center around the problem or maybe surface solutions, or potential options to solve that problem. That might be at the start of understanding who our users are, and what their needs are.
So workshop type- let’s call them workshop meetings- I would prefer to do physically. Face-to-face, in a place that allows us to use stickies, and whiteboards, and to actually use the physical space around us.
For status updates, I would prefer to do quick, short. Either emails, or Skype chats- or whatever, online chats.
For things like retros, I don’t really...I don’t really mind; physical, virtual, it doesn’t make much of a difference. Um, for...yeah, I guess for general discussions, I’m just thinking of scenarios. Like, chatting to Adi, where we need to figure out a feature, or we’ve got a little issue with- in the logic that we need to address. We typically start asynchronously via Slack or something like that. If it’s too complex, we’ll switch to voice, which works fine for me.
I like chat because it’s explicit- I’ve always got a history that I can go back and refer to. Voice allows for easier conversations, but obviously it’s not documented, or as searchable, as what text is.
Where work needs to happen, I’d prefer it in-person. So when it’s less of a communique, sort of broadcast? If it’s just a discussion of “hey, this is what we’re doing,” and “this is where things are,” then I would prefer that to be virtual or email.
I guess that’s why I was trying to make the distinction between workshops and status updates. Because I think people tend to call everything a meeting- that you put in a diary, as a meeting.
Big planning meetings (aka kickoff meetings). These are about brainstorming; getting information out of people's heads, understanding project concept, determining the objectives and what we want to achieve out of the project, etc.
Task orientated meetings i.e. sprint planning meetings, sprint review, sprint plans. Covers the task list, what has and hasn't been done, resources needed, etc. Shouldn't be held too often, as you want to give people time to do the work that's been set.
Catch up meetings. Small meetings (Shaun’s favorite). Informal, great foundation for building good working relationships.
Shaun R: my favorite meeting to have with people I work well with, and my least favorite with people who I don’t work well with.
Shaun R: So for example, I’ll go to Matt, and it’ll just be a simple, one-on-one, “just update me one what you’ve been doing." And they can present their work in a very uncritical way, more like an expose, we can have an informal discussion, and I can understand how far along the project is, and what that person needs without having to really work on the task list with them. (Although I will go back and feed that into a task list).
Digital meetings- phone calls, Skype meetings, etc.
Adrian K: Since I came from a government background and worked there for fifteen years, I was only familiar with face-to-face, boardroom-like meetings. In OpenUp...I’ve had to re-adapt.
So, my favorite used to be in-person, boardroom-like meetings for communication. Now, I've become more online, virtual. Zoom, Google Hangout, Skype. I’m able to say what I want much better.
Face-to-face meetings
Shaun R: I generally prefer face-to-face, because communication is easier there. But you’ve got to do remote when you’ve gotta do remote, and I don’t think it’s that difficult to do remote meetings.