"What?" raced through Janet's head as she read the email. "Now that's a surprise." The message was from Jack Johnson, vice president of development. It said she would receive a meeting request from Rajan Alak, an outside consultant, to interview her about the problems with the new system. The message went on to say the company had made a … [Read more...]
Decide as a Team
Do some members of your team make agreements during meetings but fail to support them afterwards? If this behavior is happening, I suspect your team is using an obscure process to make decisions. Identifying Obscure Process An obscure decision making process is easy to identify. Ask each member to create a map of the process used to make team … [Read more...]
Waiting For People Who Arrive Late
What does it say about the participants of a weekly meeting when the meeting consistently starts 5-10 minutes behind schedule? Answer, the participants are cooperating with each other to start late. Starting late is the status quo. Let's explore: Are you cooperating with the participants of your meetings to start late? How do you … [Read more...]
Rethinking Stand-Up Meetings, Part 2
I argued in my first article about stand-up meetings that the right participants were the key to a successful meeting rather than whether the participants were standing up or sitting down. Despite my dislike for forcing people to stand up, I mentioned in that article my positive regard for other elements of the standard stand-up meeting. What … [Read more...]
Rethinking Stand-Up Meetings, Part 1
Stand-up meetings are popular in software development organizations now. What makes a stand-up meeting more effective than a traditional meeting to socialize status information? Nothing. The effectiveness of a stand-up meeting, like the traditional status meeting, depends on the participants. If you have the right people at the meeting, … [Read more...]