Having a meeting that doesn’t waste your time
Developers don’t like meetings. Usually they take way more time than necessary and keep you away from doing your actual job. Yet, they’re also immensely important and completing a project would probably not be possible without meetings, both within your team and with external parties. Since they’re not going away any time soon (not until Neuralink starts connecting our brains), the next best option is to make them as efficient as possible.
But first, why are meetings necessary?
The most obvious evolutionary argument is that humans are social beings. We’ve been getting together to discuss things ever since we didn’t have a proper language to discuss things with. Meeting other humans makes you feel connected and gives you a sense of belonging to a certain community, in this case — to a common project.
Another function of meetings is to divide responsibility. When a person comes up with a solution, she most likely wouldn’t go ahead and implement it before talking to other people involved in the project. First, because the solution might contradict something another team member is doing. Second, because she wouldn’t want to be solely responsible if things go south. During a meeting, the whole team agrees on the course of action and everyone shares responsibility in this decision.
Most importantly, meetings are essential, as they allow team members to sync with each other, to make sure they’re on the same page on what needs to be done and, occasionally, to report progress to stakeholders and allow them to make decisions accordingly.
So what’s the problem with meetings?
The problem is they often take too much time and energy. And there are several reasons for this:
- Loss of focus
- Lack of a moderator role
- Unprepared participants
- Participants who don’t need to attend
- Unnecessary meeting in the first place
Let’s look at them separately.
Loss of focus
You‘re discussing where that button should be or if it should be a button at all and not a drop-down instead. You begin to argue. Suddenly, someone remembers the last episode of Rick and Morty and how the characters were arguing. The next 30 minutes are a discourse on the philosophical themes of the animated show and whether there’s actually a morale to every episode.
The rules should be simple — no off-topics. Write down what you want to chat about and discuss it after the meeting instead. A way to make this more efficient is to appoint a meeting moderator.
Lack of a moderator role
The moderator, apart from bringing the discussion back on track in case it derails, is responsible for drawing a conclusion from separate discussion points. Often, the team would discuss features and agree on a solution, but the point of the whole process is not to agree on opinions, but to come up with actionable next steps. The moderator draws the line and says “OK, this is settled, Frodo will do this and Sam will do this.” That way, deadlines will be set and the responsibility will be clearly divided.
Unprepared participants
Make sure you’re prepared before entering a meeting. If you don’t know what will be discussed, you’ll lose extra time getting up to speed with everyone else. A good way to make sure everyone is prepared is for the moderator to send the agenda to everyone, who’s going to take part in the meeting. After that, you all don’t need to spend time listening to the moderator explain what you’re meeting for.
Participants who don’t need to attend
Be mindful of who you invite to the meeting, if you’re the organiser. Ask yourself, does that person really need to be there? Does she know anything that would help the discussion? Is there anything in the discussion that would impact her work?
Unnecessary meeting in the first place
Is the meeting really all that necessary? Very often the same results can be achieved from a 10 minute one-on-one discussion. The important thing is to consider what you want to achieve with the meeting you’re organising and if there would be any harm in not organising it at all. If the meeting is taking place just because your team is used to meeting every Monday at 10 am and you don’t have anything useful to discuss, do you really need it?
Yes, meetings are a pain sometimes, but it’s a basic human trait. As we’ve already written in the past, having regular meetings is one of the main advice for keeping a healthy remote working environment. It’s the glue that keeps team members together even when they’re thousands of miles away. In a closer environment it has the added effect of helping people remember that they’re not running solo.
