Planning meeting tips (based on recent experience)
Having been involved in several, several-hour planning meetings in the last few days, I thought I'd share some experience-based advice.
- Make sure that there is a driver; someone who:
- plans the meeting (determines what will be the result of the meeting and usually provides the following information)
- sets the agenda. Critical for all but the most trivial of meetings. Provides a track to keep conversation on, ensure time is being spent in interest of and so forth.
- sets expectations of attendees. A brainstorming session about the new profile API signatures would not need as much preparation work as say, a sprint post-mortem, where you want to spend the meeting time going over what went well and what didn't; not figuring out during the meeting what went well and what didn't.
- lays the ground rules (i.e. "No laptops during meeting session", "Speaking privileges are obtained only by physical contact with the magic-speaking-wand", etc. etc.)
- keeps things on track. Use the agenda to make sure that you are getting out of the meeting what you signed up to get out of it. If topic strays from what's most important, you have a great way of cracking people on the knuckles.
- Don't be afraid to hit the brakes
- If the meeting is a wash (perhaps somebody else set up the meeting and it is being poorly executed), feel free to determine what it will take to get things back on course and, if necessary, postpone the meeting.
