Meetings, meetings, and more meetings

I have an aversion to meetings. I do understand some people like to discuss things and talk about things and that’s how they work best, but we don’t all work well that way. What’s best for one person may be very disruptive for another.

The situation

It's 4pm on Friday and we've come to the meeting. You explained everything perfectly in the first five minutes but you could've just emailed that info to us, and now we’re still sitting here an hour later. Why? That’s right, all the people who understood in the first five minutes need to take turns explaining the same thing in different ways to John from accounts, and now he's even more confused than when the meeting started.

Within five minutes you gave us a spark of an idea to go and investigate more, but you’ve stopped us doing that for the past hour so there's fidgeting, window, floor, and ceiling staring, and possibly a touch of doodling (though I do that to stay focused on listening which can confuse people). As soon as someone even hints at meeting over – we’re gone – like Captain Marvel with her pants on fire!

Let’s compromise. 

All the people who like to talk, please meet those of us who prefer to read and think in silence at least a quarter of the way.

How can we make meetings less onerous?

After a day of back to back meetings then a query as to whether my work was completed, I did some Googling to find a polite way to say ARRRRRRGGGHHHH!!! As luck would have it, my rather specific search of “how can I decline meetings without offending anyone because they are a waste of time and I’d rather keep working?” found a very useful list https://www.getminute.com/effective-meeting-tips/.

With another meeting scheduled in twenty minutes, I emailed the link to the organiser and asked if we could maybe incorporate some of the tips. It’s one of the most productive meetings we’ve had.

The meeting organiser tried a combination of various tips in the list and emailed round an agenda with a request for questions. Questions were asked and answered, in different colours, it was beautiful to behold. We still had the meeting but it was quick and to the point with nothing explained multiple times in different ways. Bliss! 

The ideas that worked:

• Email round the agenda
• Ask what we need to do so we don't need a meeting
• Get as many questions answered as possible in advance
• Get as many items clarified as possible in advance

A Thing For You To Copy So You Can Have Awesome Meetings Too OOOOH!

This is a rough mockup of the agenda sent round. You can use this technique yourself if you need to. Obviously these aren’t real requirements. Well, they probably are somewhere, but not here.

Email Prior to Actual Meeting

Dear Devs and QAs,

I need estimates for the requirements detailed below in the table. If you have clarifications, additions, or questions, ask and answer now. If we get everything answered and some matching estimates from everyone, then we may not need the meeting, but if not, at least in the meeting we can get straight to estimating.

Thanks in advance,

Your Helpful BA of Awesomeness

Requirement 1 – Holding a meeting in room 1	BA: People gather in a room and write notes on their notepads whilst reading a document on the screen. Dev1: I think there may be chairs involved, should they be included in the requirement? Apart from that, all understood. BA: Yup, good catch, have updated doc. Dev2: Can we work on Req 1 & 3 at the same time as they look very similar? BA: Alas no, they look similar but one is in the legacy area, one is in the new area, so we need to keep them separate for now. Etc….
Requirement 2 – Update table	BA: Drinks, snacks, laptops are added to the table. BA2: We also need power supplies and pens included. Dev: Can we have beer, coke, or cider? BA/BA2: No
Requirement 3 – Holding a meeting in kitchen	BA: People gather in a room and write notes on their notepads whilst reading a document that’s been printed out too many times and handed around the room. The pile of spare documents is used to prop up the wobbly table corner. Dev: ….. QA: Have you considered printing it on recycled leaves to see if it still works without breaking the printer?