Organize the Team’s Meetings

Sometimes people spend too much time in meetings. Remember that none of these meetings are serial status meetings, so each meeting should provide value to the product owner and the team.

Here is an approach to managing the time people spend in meetings:

• If the team uses iterations, consider a standup during the day. I like just before lunch. Other people select 9 or 9:30 a.m. Avoid first thing in the morning because people’s commute time can vary every day. If the team swarms or mobs, the team might not need a standup.

• Consider timeboxing the backlog planning meeting to one hour for a two-week timebox. If the team can’t get through everything in that meeting, consider retrospecting on what the product owner and the team bring to that meeting. It’s possible the team needs to workshop the stories with the product owner and limit what the product owner brings to a planning meeting.

• Consider timeboxing any backlog-refinement work to one hour to prepare for the next set of backlog items.

Here’s how I recommend a team manage an iteration-based agile approach and meetings:

1. Start the iteration on a Wednesday after lunch.
2. Conduct the one-hour timeboxed planning meeting right after lunch. Start the iteration.
3. Consider standups every day just before lunch.
4. On the middle Wednesday, conduct a one-hour timeboxed refinement meeting in the morning.
5. On the last morning of the iteration, that next Wednesday, start a demo at 9 a.m.
6. Conduct a two-hour retrospective from 10 a.m. to noon. Break for lunch.
7. Start the next iteration after lunch.

I prefer starting and ending iterations in the middle of the week. I prefer Wednesday. Tuesday or Thursday can also work. The reason I prefer the middle of the week is so that people don’t work over the weekend to hurry up and finish their work for Monday. That prevents the team members from realizing what their real velocity or cycle time is.

A flow-based team might decide to

1. Walk the board as a team if the team doesn’t mob or swarm every day just before lunch.
2. Create a cadence for its backlog-refinement activities.
3. Create a cadence for its retrospective activities.
4. Decide about demos as part of its working agreements. For example, the team might demo every story as it’s completed. The team might demo the product to sponsors or customers on a cadence.

Consider timeboxing any planning or refinement meetings. If people don’t know exactly how long something will take or what it involves, it’s time for a spike. Learning can be just as valuable as delivering functionality, especially if you learn you don’t need to do any more work in this area for a while.

In agile approaches, we tend to have more meetings, touch points, about the work. These meetings are not serial status meetings. They are not for one person’s benefit—they are for the entire team. If your meetings become too long, timebox them and see what happens.