Meeting Structure

At ________ we definitely have a love/hate relationship with meetings.

On the one hand, meetings allow to quickly sync on topics, receive buy-in from everyone involved and get everyone to the same level of info.

On the other hand, meetings are the most expensive events you can hold as people get pulled out of focus work, workdays are interrupted and in worst cases, time is wasted, wrong people are involved and no action points are generated.

Therefore, check the following info to learn how to run effective meetings and what type of meetings you will usually find in the product and tech teams so you can decide which you want/need to attend.

Meeting Types

Work in Progress

Name	Who	When	Why
1:1	You & direct report	Weekly, indiv. planned	Feedback
Design Kick-Off	PMs, Designers	Monday 9am, Ad-hoc	Introduce features, plan week
Design Review	PM, Designer, Department	Ad-hoc	Approve design
Dev Kick-Off	PM, Designer, Devs	Ad-hoc	Introduce feature/ create dev tickets
Estimation	PM, Developers	Monday 5pm, Ad-hoc	Estimate effort, plan week
Backlog Grooming	PMs	Wednesday, Friday 4pm	Prioritize/ Clean-up

How to run an effective meeting

1. Only hold meetings that are necessary

2. Invite only the people that are necessary

3. Set a clear meeting agenda & goal and timebox every aspect

4. Share agenda and needed info in advance via slack/ email

5. Start punctual - people who are late should not be “awarded” by getting special treatment

6. Summarize the decisions in the end and set action points

7. Force people with to-dos to repeat those to-dos in front of the group incl. deadlines

8. Document any decisions and send a summary to everyone via mail/ slack

9. Help people to understand - if people are talking past each other, stop the conversation and try to ensure common understanding

10. Leave meetings early if you are not relevant/ cannot help anymore