{"id":947,"date":"2010-09-10T14:05:34","date_gmt":"2010-09-10T14:05:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/masteringtheobvious.wordpress.com\/?p=73"},"modified":"2010-09-10T14:05:34","modified_gmt":"2010-09-10T14:05:34","slug":"meeting-expectations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agilepartnership.com\/fr\/meeting-expectations\/","title":{"rendered":"Meeting Expectations"},"content":{"rendered":"

A member of a team I\u2019m working with recently observed that the team\u2019s design workshops were much more effective when she (and everyone else) came to the meeting prepared with an agenda, examples of the problem space and some other concise reference materials related to the design discussions. Having this pre-work (and pre-thinking) in place made the meeting flow smoothly and helped participants understand the context for the decisions being made so that a lot of ground could be covered in a relatively short working session.<\/p>\n

The observation that meetings will be more effective with some thoughtful preparation seems like common sense, but somehow I still find myself attending too many meetings that waste people\u2019s time and energy because the intended outcomes aren\u2019t clear and\/or necessary info & decision makers aren\u2019t in the room. I sense that because Agile favours lightweight processes and documentation, some teams have formed the impression that you shouldn\u2019t be worried about things like agendas and preparing for meetings\/workshops\/whatever kind of group session, because you\u2019ll do it all \u201cjust in time\u201d (i.e. \u201cmaking it up as you go along\u201d); this is a misunderstanding, as Agile work practices place great value on identifying desired outcomes and how you\u2019ll know you\u2019re done before you dive in to a piece of work, as well as timeboxing work to help make sure that something of value gets delivered in the time available.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot of really good advice on facilitating effective meetings readily available<\/a>. I go back to Jean Tabaka\u2019s book Collaboration Explained<\/a> repeatedly for guidance on how to facilitate effective meetings while fostering collaboration and creativity. One technique from this book that I\u2019ve had great success with is building agendas using a set of questions; rather than just identifying a topic for discussion, phrase the agenda item in terms of the specific question(s) on that topic that the group needs to answer. This technique has three advantages:
\n\u2022 people are prepared for what specifically needs to be discussed\/decided
\n\u2022 there is an clear outcome to the discussion identified from the outset so that participants know when the topic is \u201cdone\u201d for the meeting (\u201chave we answered this question?\u201d)
\n\u2022 it limits rat-holing by redirecting focus back to the specific aspect of the topic to be addressed
\nAgendas might also include timeboxes for each topic\/outcome in order to keep the group on-track. It\u2019s astonishing how much can actually be accomplished in a few minutes of discussion when the team is prepared and focused.<\/p>\n

You can help tighten up your team\u2019s meetings even if you\u2019re not the meeting facilitator. Esther Derby provides a great list of suggestions<\/a> that any meeting participant can implement to help improve meeting discipline, including :
\n\u2022 ask for an agenda ahead of time
\n\u2022 send only one person from your team
\n\u2022 politely decline the invitation
\n\u2022 offer to take notes
\n\u2022 facilitate from where you sit
\n\u2022 ask for progress checks
\n\u2022 help others participate
\n\u2022 summarize
\nLastly, don\u2019t be afraid to ask questions about the proposed duration of a meeting. Microsoft Outlook has conditioned us to schedule meetings in 30 minute increments, but different meeting purposes require differing amounts of time (often less than 30 min or 1 hour). Using arbitrary timeslots because that\u2019s what the scheduling app gives you by default leads to Parkinson\u2019s Law<\/a>. Be bold and schedule a 15 minute meeting if you think the objectives can be met in that time. And rather than waiting several minutes to begin in order to accommodate latecomers, start your meetings right on time and end them after 25 or 55 minutes to allow participants time to get to their next engagement (of course, if your team is dedicated and co-located, this is a non-issue).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A member of a team I\u2019m working with recently observed that the team’s design workshops were much more effective when she (and everyone else) came to the meeting prepared with an agenda, examples of the problem space and some other concise reference materials related to the design discussions. Having this pre-work (and pre-thinking) in place […]\"\" <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agile","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agilepartnership.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agilepartnership.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agilepartnership.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agilepartnership.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agilepartnership.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agilepartnership.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agilepartnership.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agilepartnership.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agilepartnership.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}