How can you avoid those longwinded project update meetings?
Today, I’d like to offer an agile scrum solution to the long meeting problem: the Timeboxed meeting.
What is a Timeboxed meeting?
A Timeboxed meeting is much like its title; the goal is to box team members in. Only allow them a certain amount of time to update the team – ideally three minutes per person. Normally, each team member is asked to answer three questions:
- What was done yesterday?
- What challenges were faced?
- What is the plan for today?
This meeting structure is typically used when a project is divided into different time periods, with each having its own schedule, deliverables and budget. By focusing on very specific questions meetings are kept short and to the point, allowing team members to get back work quickly. Asking team members to summarize their last 24 hours in three minutes is a tall order, so you may want to start by limiting the number team members per meeting but give them more time – five minutes an individual. As team members become more accustomed to the Timeboxed meeting, move it to three minutes and increase the number of people in the meeting. Before you know it those lengthy time sucking meetings will be a distant memory.
A quick note about the Timebox meeting. For these meetings to work, you must remember that the idea is to hold them daily.
To learn more about the Timeboxed meeting check out the Project Management Institute’s Timeboxed meeting blog post.