Meeting Process

From Square Root

Define the process by which meetings will be held to ensure they are effective.

Contents 1 Approach 1.1 Status Meeting 1.1.1 Status Report (3 minutes max) 1.2 Working Meeting 1.3 Client Meeting 1.4 Document Review Meeting 1.5 Roles 2 Metrics and Data 2.1 Time in Meeting 2.2 Agenda Completed 3 Analysis and Reflection 4 References

Approach

At least one day before a meeting, an agenda is set and distributed by email to all attendees. The Meeting Notes template on the website should be used.

The purpose of the meeting will determine the approach.

1. When sending the meeting agenda this should be created in the wiki.
2. Meeting notes should be recorded directly in the wiki.
3. Send an email to the audience of the meeting that the notes are uploaded.
4. Use meeting notes template and fill all the field that apply.

Status Meeting

Purpose of a status meeting is to make the team aware of what everyone is doing for this week, raise any issues, and whether there needs to be a resource readjustment.

• Runs no longer than 60 minutes
• Agenda email should include:
  1. The agenda.
  2. The main topics to be discussed, along with times. Each item is assign a person responsible for directing that part of the meeting.
  3. The meeting roles (moderator, time-keeper, risk-recorder, note-taker).
• Meeting structure:
  1. Review agenda items.
  2. Review action items from last meeting. Responsible: Scribe
  3. Report milestone completion and earned value. Responsible: Managing engineer. Time:5 minutes.
  4. Status report(see below). Responsible: Whole team: 15 minutes.
  5. Mentor minutes. Responsible/Lead by: Mentors. Time: 5 minutes
  6. Reiterate action items and decisions. Responsible/Lead by: Note-taker. Time: 2 minutes
  7. Meeting survey. Responsible: Whole team. Time: 3 minutes
  8. Topic of the week. Responsible: Based on role. Time: 25 minutes.
• Action items created during the meeting should be recorded on sharepoint and assigned on the same day.
• Determine tasks and due dates

Status Report (3 minutes max)

1. What tasks have you been working on last week?
2. What issues have you faced?
3. What tasks are you going to work on this week?
4. Are you going to finish the milestone you own in this iteration?

Working Meeting

Purpose of a working meeting is to discuss and solve problems the team is having, be it technical or otherwise.

Before the meeting, assign each person tasks for preparation.

• Runs no longer than 60 minutes
• Clear agenda sets the goals of the meeting
• Artifacts produced during the meeting are posted to the website
• Determine tasks and due dates

Client Meeting

Client meetings are a time when the Square Root team can ask questions, show progress, or work with the client to resolve issues. Client meetings follow the same basic rules as Working Meetings with the addition of the following guidelines:

• Since Nancy's availability is limited and time valuable, meetings will be held to 60 minutes unless otherwise noted by Nancy
• A clear agenda must be sent to Nancy with all topics and questions in writing at least 24 hours in advanced

SOW:Provide a meeting agenda for client meetings at least 12 hours in advance of the meeting. Read ahead material for meetings must be sent at least 36 hours in advance. 

• Meeting invitation should be sent 1 week prior to the meeting and a reminder, 1-2 days before the meeting.
• One of either teleconference or face-to-face meetings will be held weekly with Nancy unless it is deemed not to be required by both the client and team
• Meeting minutes are to be posted to the website the same day as the meeting. In addition, a copy of the notes are to be sent to Nancy via email the same day as the meeting.
• If no changes are made to meeting minutes within 48 hours, the notes are considered unchallenged and complete

If documents are to be reviewed during the meeting, protocols from the Document Review Meeting should be considered as well.

Assign action item, e.g. revise use cases

Document Review Meeting

Review meetings are called when a group document must be reviewed. Examples might include a presentation or group report. Document Review Meetings follow the same basic Working Meeting guidelines with the addition of the following:

• Documents must be sent out at least 48 hours in advance of the meeting

How about not restricting the time, but set the reviewing time according to documents?

• Team members must bring revisions to the meeting and be prepared to discuss specific review points.
• The document under review will be projected for everyone to see.
• The document author will direct the meeting and make corrections/adjustments
• It must be decided by the team whether the meeting will be time-based or task-based. Time-based will determine a hard stopping time for the review, task-based dictates that the review will continue until complete.

Ideally, Document Review Meetings can be avoided by team members taking initiative for editing documents, using features such as "Track Changes", and communicating as a team through other means such as the wiki or email.

Roles

Moderator

Makes sure the meeting stays on subject according to the agenda and keeps time.

Meeting Leader

Leads discussion, presents material, calls meeting.

Note Taker

Records meeting minutes and distributes to all attendees. Updates meeting data sheet. Notes should be taken directly in the wiki.

Process Owner

Quality Process Engineer.

Metrics and Data

Data should be stored on sharepoint. A good meeting meets its objectives according to the agenda, directs future work, and finishes on time.

Time in Meeting

Help ascertain how well we are planning meetings

Data to collect

Time planned, actual time in meeting.

Meeting planning is going well if our meetings are taking less time than that allocated to the meeting(Green). They were not properly planned or individuals were not prepared if more time was needed to get through the agenda without amending it(Red).

Agenda Completed

Determine if meetings are meeting objectives.

Data to collect

Yes(green)/No(red) based on items in agenda

Anything less than 100% indicates potential room for improving the way we run meetings as a team.

All data will be recorded in a spreadsheet held on the server.

Analysis and Reflection

References