Remote-Meeting Guidelines at Camunda

Camunda is a remote-first company, and one of our principles is?"We manage, collaborate, and socialize remotely". This means that by default, we assume that meetings happen remotely, via Zoom.

The guidelines below are a direct copy + paste from our internal handbook. They provide orientation and best practice tips for our employees, and they ensure a certain consistent behavior (f.ex. to avoid hybrid meetings). Hopefully they're a helpful inspiration for others which is why I've posted them here. Also, I appreciate feedback, f. ex. in case you disagree with what you read, or have additional best practices you'd like to share.

Avoid Hybrid Meetings

A hybrid meeting is one where some of the meeting participants are in the same physical room, and others attend remotely, via Zoom.?

Whenever possible, we should avoid that kind of setup, as it's better to?have everyone on a level playing field for communication and discussion. Usually, the people attending remotely have a much harder time following the discussion due to audio issues or because they miss certain parts of the non-verbal communication. On the other hand, the onsite attendees cannot really benefit from the advantages of an onsite gathering (e.g. standing in front of a whiteboard, together) since that would fully exclude the remote attendees, which makes the onsite meeting basically pointless. Because of this, we usually have remote meetings only. If we do meet onsite however, it's onsite only.

If a hybrid call must happen, everyone should use their own equipment (camera, headset, screen) even if they are physically sitting in the same room. This ensures that everyone is on the same playing field in terms of call experience. Ideally, you separate for the meeting and find your own workspace, creating a 100% remote setup. This helps avoid audio problems from delays and feedback.

Avoid Back-to-back Meetings

When scheduling meetings, we always schedule a bit less time than the full / half hour, so that people don't have back-to-back meetings.

Avoiding back-to-back meetings is helpful because you're less in a rush and get some time for a little break (get something to drink, go to the bathroom, etc.). Overall, this helps to reduce the general stress level over the course of the day.?

This technique only works if we apply it consistently. If some of us schedule meetings to start a bit later, and others schedule them to end a bit earlier, it wouldn't work.?

That's why we consistently?always start meetings at the half / full hour and end them early:

• 5 minutes buffer for short meetings (i.e., 25 instead of 30 minutes).
• 10 minutes buffer for long meetings (e.g., 50 instead of 60 minutes; 80 instead of 90 minutes)

Outlook Configuration

On the original handbook page, here's a link to a page that shows how you can configure outlook so it observes this idea automatically when you create a meeting?

Observe People's Availabilities

When scheduling meetings, we do this based on the availabilities indicated in the calendars of the attendees. Here we also consider the general availability, i.e. the times of the day that the attendee is usually working. This is important in particular when meeting attendees work in different time zones. For example, many people will want to finish the day at around 6pm their time, to have dinner with their families- if that is the case, it should be respected unless the meeting is truly important/urgent and it's inevitable to have it at a later time. The information about general availability can be configured and found in people's calendars, as described?[link to the respective page in our internal handbook].?

Optimize for CET / ET time corridor

For meetings with a cross-geo audience, we

• preferably aim for the time corridor 3pm-6pm CET, which translates to 9am-12pm ET.
• standardize on CET when talking about meeting times (e.g. in agendas).

State a clear Goal and own it

Your meeting participants should know what your meeting is about, so they can prepare and you get the most out of it. At the minimum, the meeting should have a meaningful subject line, and in the invite you should state the goal for the meeting (see FAITH values :?Start with the Goal). As the one setting up the meeting, you're usually also the?DRI (Directly Responsible Individual)?for achieving the meeting's goal, which will mean that during the meeting you need to not just moderate it, but make sure it's progressing towards the intended goal, while observing the limited time.?

Use a Meeting Document

A meeting document is especially helpful to organize input from different participants, e.g. to set up an agenda, share content, capture questions, and document meeting outcomes.

We typically use Google Docs since it allows for collaborative editing before, during, and after the meeting. Below are meeting document templates you can use.?

[List of Google Docs Templates]

Be early?

If you are the DRI for a meeting, open or login to the call a few minutes early.?This will ensure that you can start the meeting on time.??

Stay on Time

Begin the meeting at the scheduled time. Don't wait for latecomers (FAITH:?Always progress), and finish the meeting on time.??If the DRI is late for the call, a colleague or leader should step in and moderate the call until the DRI is able to join.?This will ensure that the meeting always starts on time.??

Avoid (long) Presentations

Meetings should be for conversations. Getting people into the same (virtual) room is a significant invest, and using that invest for just listening to one person talking, is a waste of scarce resources. Sometimes it can be helpful to convey your thoughts in a presentation, but it shouldn't take more than 10-15 minutes. In general, consider sharing a recorded presentation before the meeting, and/or share it as a written narrative, so that people can consume your thoughts asynchronously and then use the live meeting for questions and discussions. If you do share content before the meeting, try to do it at least 2 business days before the meeting, so that the attendees have a chance to consume it beforehand.?

The DRI is the Moderator

For very small meetings (e.g. 3 people) you might not need a moderator. But most often you will. The meeting should have a clear DRI (typically the person that has invited to the meeting). That DRI has requested a significant invest from the attending people (their time), and now it's the DRI's responsibility to deliver the adequate ROI by achieving the goal of the meeting. To that end, the DRI needs to moderate the meeting and walk the group through the agenda.

Setup Speaking Rules

A clear housekeeping rule on who is allowed to speak can be helpful, to avoid people talking over one another and losing track of the matter that needs to be discussed.

Below is a suggestion that has proven to work well:?

Best Practice Rule: Who should speak

The meeting moderator can speak any time and interrupt people if necessary (e.g., if they're talking too long or getting carried way). Anyone else needs to raise their hand (using the Zoom feature) and speak once requested by the moderator, and they should not talk over one another.?

For larger meetings, enable the Zoom setting "Mute all participants upon entry" in order to avoid people joining and accidentally disturbing with unmuted microphones. Consider assigning a Co-Host who can mute participants while you're moderating in case they are obviously unmuted by accident.

To do this please follow the below steps:?

1. Log into zoom
2. Select "meetings" on the left side of screen.
3. Select "schedule a meeting" on the right side of screen.?
4. Enter applicable meeting details?
5. Scroll to the bottom of the page & beside "options" select "show"
6. Check the "Mute Participants upon entry" and enter the email address of the alternative / co-host.?
7. Click "Save"

Stay focused

It sounds obvious and it's a core value at Camunda, but in reality it can be very hard to achieve. Although the meeting, or specific agenda points, have a clear goal in mind, meeting attendees get sometimes carried away by what comes to mind. For example, you might be discussing an idea for your next team building event. During that discussion, somebody says "Oh and thinking of team building, I also want to point out that our team overview page in the handbook really needs to be updated, so we should..." and suddenly your conversation is off track. As the moderator (meeting DRI), you are both empowered and accountable to get the group back on track, f. ex. by saying: "Let me step in here, yes I can see your point, but please add it as a separate topic to the agenda for today or next time we meet, because right now we need to focus on the open question of our next team building event".

Document results

The spoken word is transient. Always assume that everyone in the meeting will immediately forget everything that has been said, as soon as the meeting ends. As the meeting DRI, it is your job to make sure that the meeting results are captured in writing, to make sure that decisions, todo's or follow-ups are clarified, and also to avoid discussing the same questions over and over again. This doesn't necessarily mean that you need to write them down yourself- in the?recurring meeting template, it's actually the job of the person that brought up the topic, to also document the discussion results (but as the meeting DRI, it's your job to make sure they do).?

Recordings

Recording a meeting is not a substitute for good meeting note taking and documentation of results. A summary of the meeting for those who attended and need a reminder or those who did not attend is generated by the combination of detailed agenda items combined with the notes taken by the person who added the agenda item. Reading the meeting notes is the preferred way we recommend people catch up on what took place in the meeting as it can be done faster and is thus a more efficient use of time. The recording is simply a tool that can be used if good notes are not available or if there is still a lack of clarity after reading the documented results.

Share related documents?

It should be as easy as possible for everyone to find information that is related to a specific meeting, which helps participants to prepare in advance and follow-up later. Make sure that participants are aware of the?meeting document?and related documents before and at the beginning of every meeting. To do so, share the link to the meeting document, slides and any other documents as part of the meeting invite. If possible, link to a central page in Confluence where all of this information can be found instead of just linking to the Google Doc directly. This allows for adding additional resources as follow-up.?