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Meetings, the alternative to work, where the minutes are taken and the hours are lost. So many initiatives are created to make them more productive, keep people on point or just keep people out of them.
Something I’ve recently started doing is front loading the meetings in my day where possible. This helps by ensuring that when actions come out of the meetings there is time in the day still to do them. This also helps to ensure that when things come up during the day that have to be taken care of urgently, you are less likely to have to move meetings to accommodate them. This helps reduce one of my meeting pet peeves, meeting procrastination. If I have to move a meeting then I will move it once and do everything I can to make sure the newly arranged time is met. Obviously there are exceptions but if I have to move a meeting a second time, I really put some consideration into whether the meeting is actually needed, considering we have survived this long without it. Another key to reducing the meetings in your diary is delegation, or more specifically ensuring that the right people are in the meeting and the wrong people are not. If a member of your team can contribute more to the meeting than you and you are both in the meeting, why are you in the meeting? There are too many meetings that contain people who are not contributing. If they are not needed, it is the responsibility of the meeting host to ensure they are not there. There are alternatives to this, for example Elon Musk’s 3 meeting rules: 1. No large meetings Make sure that you are not inviting people who don't need to be there, try and keep the numbers as low as possible 2. If you're not adding value to a meeting, leave This is one I’ve used in the past but disagree with now. We would have people complain that they were wasting their time being in the meeting so we started telling them they could leave whenever they wanted. Once decisions were being made without their input they soon stayed in the meeting until the end. So this meant they were needed. This comes back to the previous point, if they are not adding value, the host should not have invited them. 3. No frequent meetings This is another one with a grey area. I think frequent meetings for Agile ceremonies are very much needed and these are not as painful as some make out. Working in an Agile environment, sometimes it can feel like there are a lot of meetings. Stand Ups, Sprint Planning , Retros, and that’s before the unofficial Agile meetings like Story Grooming sessions. You’ll find that there are just as many meetings using Waterfall but we don’t think of them because they are not named. Meetings such as catch-up with Jeff, workshop with Maria and so on. These ad hoc meetings quickly add up but without the recurring named meetings, they are quickly forgotten and never seem to happen as often as they do. If you are running a project then having regular meetings to touch base is very much necessary. Where I would agree with Elon is if this frequently recurring meeting is not needed and will not add value then it should be cancelled. We have enough to do without having to attend a meeting with no agenda. Speaking of meetings with no agenda, there are behaviours that should be considered for every meeting without fail:
So meetings are important, they are very much needed but they need rules, and they need to have a purpose and an outcome. If you find yourself in endless meetings where you are not contributing, ask the host why you have been invited and what you are expected to contribute. It may be you are needed but not for the whole meeting. Things like this need to be considered. Next time you arrange a meeting, take a step back and work out how much this meeting is going to cost is salaries per hour with all those people sat there. Can the meeting be shorter, can the information be sought in another way, is there an alternative that would work?
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The most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do with Agile is remote ceremonies. I would always insist on people joining in person whenever possible and I always designed the ceremony to have the greatest impact on those in the room. People who dialled in were never an afterthought but I was convinced that they would not benefit from the session as much as the people in the room. Retrospectives were the biggest challenge. You can only really participate if you were there, how else could you be fully involved and grasp the feeling in the room. Even with video, how would it even be possible to understand the vibe of the group if you weren’t there. It was a problem that could not be solved so why even bother trying to solve it. They would just have to understand the impact and it doesn't matter too much anyway because we always have most people in the room so it’s fine.
Well, looks like I don't have a choice anymore. Not only is this something that needs to be addressed now, it might be the way forward for a long (if not permanent) time. So what are the rules that need to be in place for this to work? Well if we are going to make sure that we can communicate effectively we need to be able to see each other, that means video. There is something about looking someone in the eyes that makes communication easier. It also forces focus, if we are all on video we are obliged to pay attention. It’s easier to pay attention when you know all eyes could be on you. Another thing that we can do with video that is more effective than audio alone is interact. Just because we are not all sat in the same room doesn’t mean we can’t do physical things. Doing things like getting people to stand up and jump about a bit and being able to see each other do this is fun and you can all laugh about it together like you were in the same room. So it’s not the same but it’s not an excuse to have a dry boring retrospective. There are a few video conferencing tools out there but I like using Google Meet https://meet.google.com/ as it’s free and comes with most of the features that paid video conferencing tools come with. Collaboration is probably the most important part of Agile. So video is a good start but we need to be able to share things in real time. When we are sitting in a room one of my favourite bits of kit is a whiteboard. The ability to write things down and share things instantly with the team is very effective. Losing this ability in a Retrospective is very disruptive to the flow of the meeting. After searching high and wide I have finally settled on a whiteboard that I find great for sharing online, Whiteboard Fox https://whiteboardfox.com/. Multiple people can all share and contribute to this in real time which is great for when we want to work together on a problem. Taking this one step further and using this on a touch screen makes it much easier to use than with a mouse. Another great tool that helps with collaboration is Slack https://slack.com/. Being able to use something that we can share links and other text on is a very useful tool. It can also be used for writing down and sharing as you would normally do with Post-It Notes in an in-person Retrospective. Slack also integrates with a lot of other tools you might be using to run your development like JIRA, GSuite, Trello and many more. So in conclusion, yes doing Agile ceremonies in person is always going to be easier but in reality it should not be an excuse for making them any less engaging and interactive. There are many tools and techniques out there that can be used and built on to make the experience a positive one, so have a look and see what works best for you. “I’ve always done it like this”, the dreaded words I’ve heard far too many times when training for a new job. Blindly following what came before, never questioning because it’s easier that way. I’m amazed that people will just do something because they are told, regardless of how illogical it sounds. Sometimes even they themselves question it but refuse to pursue their inquisition. I used to get up at 5:30am for a job that involved manually processing trades. Sometimes when I got to the office there weren’t even any to process but I had to be there just in case. On a typical day it took hours to manually process and review all the work . When I asked why the process was manual, I was told it had always been this way and it won’t change. I was determined for it to change so I taught myself to code. Within a couple of months I had automated the entire process from processing to review and had reduced a manual 4 hours process to an automated 15 min process. Ironically before I could enjoy the extra time in bed, as the process was so efficient it was migrated to another area of the business so we had more time for other manual processes (a theme which seems to have continued throughout my career).
In our new world we find ourselves in, we can no longer go blindly into the night. It is our job to question everything we do. Like Elon Musk questioning every dollar spent when building a spaceship from scratch, we must not accept things just because that is how they are or used to be! SpaceX would not exist if they copied NASA. Times of hardship usually bring innovation and creativity. There is a need to do something different. An opportunity to dig into the ashes and find something that has been missing, something that has been needed but we were too lazy to look for or too comfortable to realise we should do something about it. I hate change. I love comfort and routine. Yet I will not accept something being illogically wrong. I will go out of my way to change things to ensure they are the best comfort and routine they can be. To this end I am always changing, as is my routine and I am always out of my comfort zone. If you spend enough time out of your comfort zone, it becomes your comfort zone. 2 years ago I hated flying. It kept me up at night. It would ruin the build up to a holiday. It would ruin holidays. I would survive flying with diazepam and champagne, a zone where very little bothers me (except screaming children). Due to work and holidays, last year I flew 15 times. Being forced to do so made me create a new routine for it. Although the early mornings will always suck, you can make things comfortable. Due to Covid, this year I have flown twice. I really miss flying and I cannot wait to get on a plane. If you’d have told me that 2 years ago I would have laughed at you! So we are all being impacted right now. No matter who you are. We are all on a detour until things start to head back to something like we remember. Embrace the detour! I hate being stuck at home but I’m using the time to refine myself. I never thought I’d be writing that’s for sure. I haven’t written since I was a teenager writing for snowboard magazines. Yes when the pubs and football stadiums open again I will be there (I may move in initially), but in the meantime as I have plenty of time to reflect I will continue looking at myself and asking why I’ve always done it this way. |
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