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
Only hold meetings that are necessary
Invite only the people that are necessary
Set a clear meeting agenda & goal and timebox every aspect
Share agenda and needed info in advance via slack/ email
Start punctual - people who are late should not be “awarded” by getting special treatment
Summarize the decisions in the end and set action points
Force people with to-dos to repeat those to-dos in front of the group incl. deadlines
Document any decisions and send a summary to everyone via mail/ slack
Help people to understand - if people are talking past each other, stop the conversation and try to ensure common understanding
Leave meetings early if you are not relevant/ cannot help anymore
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