What Meetings Are Product Managers Spending Their Time In?
Where can you find a PM during the course of a week?
Product managers spend a lot of time in meetings.
The “productivity” email I get from Microsoft, based on my Outlook and Teams activity, tells me that I interact with 50–60 people a month, and spend around 25% of my time in meetings.
That’s a lot of time sitting around talking, but it’s fine to do if the talking has a purpose and you are gaining value from it.
So if you’re new to product management, what meetings can you expect to be part of, how do you contribute, and what value will you gain from attending?
Daily Stand-ups
As the name indicates, these are daily meetings and are chance for the team to get together and for individuals to highlight their progress, indicate what they’re going to be working on next, and flag up any issues that might impeded their progress.
These are sometimes called huddles, daily scrum, or morning rollcall.
They’re short sessions (maybe only 30–60 seconds per team member) and should stay focused. If something needs a more in depth discussion then it gets discussed outside of the stand-up.