Improve Communication, Have more meetings

I know what you’re thinking – another meeting? There is nothing though that improves communication in a project: A meeting even more so then a Kanban board. Any team working toward a common goal will benefit because this practice will improve your communications.

The biggest resistance in meetings are because they’re poorly run. Daily scrum meetings are an integral part of the scrum methodology. The meetings last for 15 minutes, occasionally longer, but provide just enough time to address problems and allow time to define solutions. Important part of having an effective meeting is to realize that maybe you’re not look at solving and offering a solution to the problem, it is about raising them.

Daily scrum meeting effectively answers these three questions:

What have you done since the last meeting?
What will you do between now and the next meeting?
What got in your way of doing work?

The daily meeting is not a design session and should not turn into a working session. Don’t discuss design or start to solve a problem. The meeting informs the team leader giving them direct information on what they can do to improve the productivity of the team. Meetings are for creating awareness, and if you want to solve the problem immediately suggest, anyone who’s interested should hang around afterward.

Patrick Lencioni is one of my favorite authors. One of his books, Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable…About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business (J-B Lencioni Series)advocates the structure of a daily check in. He says the keys to make it successful are don’t sit down, keep it administrative and don’t cancel when someone can’t be there. It is important to share the news. I highly recommend the book and the outline of the four different types of meetings he discusses: Daily, Weekly Tactical, Monthly Strategic, and Quarterly Review.

Having frequent short meetings simply keeps everyone on track. Sharing daily activities and schedules allows you to not operate in a vacuum and the knowledge of a team is always more powerful than the knowledge of an individual. .

BTW: Short Meetings are easier to manage and make interesting. Improve your communications – Start holding meeting but do it front of the Team Kanban Board.

Listen to a tip from Patrick about improving team communication:

P.S. Patrick’s book is great in audio: Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable

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