Steps to Ensure Productive Meetings

Meetings are the most productive tool you can use to manage any project, yet often, they have an adverse effect. In software development, meetings must be as effective as possible when timeframes and productivity are critical.

We’ve put together some steps to ensure productive meetings and, more importantly, products are delivered on time!

ATTENDEES: DOES EVERYONE NEED TO BE PRESENT?

Ever wondered why most meetings are booked for at least 60 minutes? Why? It’s a waste of time unless there is a long list of agenda items dictating this.?

Meetings of more than seven people are pointless; too many decision-makers, too many personalities, and too many places for people to hide. If all developers are in a meeting, they’re not writing any lines of code, and the product creation cycle is being delayed accordingly.??

You want passionate people in the room. Ideally, one person from each department is working on the product, a designer, a front-end developer, a back-end developer, a project manager/product owner, and a tester. So, all variables can work together to resolve a problem / cook up exciting opportunities, using collective skillsets and brain lengths. Any more than seven people and the meeting goes off-topic, and a 20-minute session becomes an hour.

RE-IMAGINE THE UPDATE MEETING?

Getting the whole company together for each person to talk through what they have done that week and give progress updates eats-up time.

Most attendees have turned off by the time you’re halfway through the meeting.?

Instead, Update meetings should be product-specific, focusing on what each person is doing for the week ahead. A 1-minute quick fire of what they’re working on and if they have any blockers or issues which will prevent them from achieving it is all that’s needed.??

With it being product-specific, all relevant people are there to assist/resolve that problem. Adverse knock-on effects to other products can be caught quickly, preventing delays and frustration.?

DON’T BRING DONUTS

Meetings should be 20 minutes, tops. We don’t have time to eat no doughnuts.?

Be animated, take a walk, and draw out the problem and thoughts on a white wall. Stretching your legs and your brain simultaneously boosts creativity, and drawing it out on a board allows it to be visualised.?

The visualisation allows all members to see what is essential in front of them, setting the agenda and focussing discussions, allowing conversations to stay on topic rather than offering conversational rabbit holes.?

Further still, visualisation allows problems to be departmentalised; you’ll start to develop tasks to resolve and cluster these tasks together into a flow. The once previous problem; has a product roadmap of functions leading to its resolution.

MAKE MEETINGS COUNT

Meetings should have a clear agenda, be planned with visuals by the person proposing them and have actionable items.?

This allows everyone attending to know and be prepared for what is being discussed – so they can prepare ahead of time and prevent the first 20 minutes from discussing the agenda items.?

Should other conversation matters come up, they can be dismissed, so conversations are brought back to issues listed in the agenda – the people in the meeting are there to discuss the agenda points; any other topics are most likely irrelevant to them, so allowing issues to go off-piste is wasting their time.?

After each agenda item, please note each decision item and ensure someone is delegated to action it.?

Meetings should be documented; this shouldn’t be a waste of time taking minutes; this is uploading each agenda item heading, the outcome agreed, and who needs to action it.?

Confluence and Jira are ideal, as their link-up and status updates streamline this process.

After the agreed action time, i.e., two weeks, the meeting file should be reviewed by the person who proposed the meeting, checking the status update of each agenda item and chasing up what the blocker or issue is if it has not been completed.?

SEND AN?EMAIL OR?SLACK GROUP MESSAGE INSTEAD

A meeting is a collection of minds to resolve a problem or plan an opportunity. A panel of 8 people for 1 hour is a day’s worth of revenue the company is wasting away.?

Communication services such as Slack have their place to highlight problems and issues and can quickly resolve matters. A couple of sentences in a group Slack message that all product team members can see; can quickly determine a good range of tasks enabling you to productively move on without waiting and scheduling a meeting when everyone is free and available.?

If your Slack message becomes a back and two dialogues of 3 responses or more, instantly put a pin in it and have a meeting instead. Communication services are there to flag matters and quick conversation; anything more than this, and it’s simply more productive to get everyone talking.?