Managing Productive Meetings - Best Practices

Meetings are essential part of communications in almost every industry. Specially in software companies the meeting is usually considered to be a tool to solve a problem statement by sitting together, discussing the subject matter, concluding the results & execute it on the respective workstation / desks. The different teams usually need to have meetings of different types for different purposes with each others e.g. weekly meeting for status sharing, management meeting for next quarter planning, daily scrum, sprint planning etc. and many more.

The IT companies usually organize meetings in better way between participants regardless of the their timezone & location etc thru the available modern meeting tools. However, following points would be very much helpful in making the meetings more healthy & productive, since many meetings can be ended up as a "waste of precious time of participants", if not taken care of seriously. On the big scale, this time waste pattern can contribute a lot to develop a wrong organizational culture around meeting including important ones too.

• The software companies should develop the culture for Purpose Focused Time-Boxed Meetings to resolve the problem statement e.g. a back and forth never ending email chain thru "Reply All" from everybody can create perfect sense of going into a meeting and resolve the issue, and many other example could be.
• The IT companies should also sell the mindset of "Less Meetings & More Work" model to the employees thru creating awareness around organizing a meeting only when it is really needed, that would also help a lot in making timely project deliveries.
• The Organizer must send meeting Invite with Reasonable Time Gap for participants e.g. at least before COB today for next day meeting, and at least 3-4 hours for same day meeting, and this must be taken care of seriously while working in different timezone, to avoid a situation like "I was not aware of that I have an important meeting at 8:00 AM sharp because the invite was sent somewhere late night".
• The Organizer must check the earliest possible Common Free Time Slot of every participants before sending the invite to avoid any meeting conflict. This would also be highly unethical to overrule the existing meetings slots of others by giving more precedence to "my meeting", ending up building a unprofessional organizational culture.
• The Organizer should also check & book the required / available Meeting / Conference Room in case of meeting within office premises to avoid meeting room availability conflict.
• The Organizer must book the meeting time slot Within the Business Hours i.e. should not be after the day end or within any break time e.g. lunch / coffee break, or get the explicit permissions from the participants otherwise (e.g. meeting with offshore team etc.)
• The Organizer should mention the "Required & Optional" participants to align the expectations about their availability, and only those participants should be invited which are / can be required in the meeting by putting them in respective boxes. The participants can forward meeting invite if any important participants is missed even.
• The Organizer should also share the Remote Link of the Meeting e.g. Webex, GoToMeeing, Zoom etc. to let anybody join from remote location too & share screen, if required. Optionally the Organizer can also Record the meeting to listen it later for better understanding, whenever required.
• The Organizer should also share the Meeting Agenda to let participants get prepared before joining the meeting to make it more productive, beneficial & time saving for everyone, rather than sending blank meeting invite.
• The Participants must Respond to the Meeting Invite by culture being following in the organization e.g. accept explicitly otherwise considered as rejected OR reject explicitly otherwise considered as accepted and so on.
• The participants should check & install the Remote Software Meeting Place Plug-Ins or Links before meeting start time, if required e.g. Webex, GoToMeeting, Zoom etc. to avoid any delays / difficulties in joining.
• The participants should also check the Internet, Audio, Video etc devices before joining the meeting, and it would be nice to have their backup just in case any of them stops working unexpectedly.
• The Participants must Reach to the Meeting Place few minutes before the actual meeting start time i.e. walk-in into the conference room or dial-in to the remote meeting place e.g. Webex, GoToMeeting, Zoom etc. to let meeting start immediately exact sharp on-time without wasting a single minute. However, do not start or don't expect the meeting to be started before meeting start time mentioned.
• It would be a nice practice for participants to Keep on Mute, unless they have to speak something. Similarly it would also be a great to add input only whenever required & keep silent otherwise.
• The Participants should join meeting from a Noise Free Background specially working from home to avoid listening problems for others, just in case. Keeping on Mute would also help a lot on this.
• The Participants should Read Agenda Carefully to get prepared themselves before meeting to make it a productive. The methodology of speaking in the meeting should also be designed before meeting to focus on the subject / purpose e.g. in customer / vendor meeting etc.
• The Participants Should Stop Working e.g. writing code, sending emails, making diagrams etc. beyond the context during the meeting time to make a full focus on subject, or their participation can be void otherwise.
• Someone from the participants should be marked responsible for Sharing the MOMs right after the meting so that all context must be captured in writing & nothing should be missed i.e. usually the Organizer plays that role,
• Meetings Must be Finished within the Planned Time Slot to avoid next meeting conflicts for participants etc. The Organizer should lead the meeting in a way that discussion should not be distracted from the subject, and all the agenda points must also be covered, concluded & closed.
• The Participants should also take notes from their side as Meeting Takeaway and must execute the points discussed / agreed in the meeting on their desk to make it healthy productive meeting.

The exceptional scenarios e.g. production down, urgent management meeting etc. can be excluded from some of the above points in some cases.