Team Meetings

Team Meetings

Team meetings are an essential part of team building. Properly run, they will help develop a true, committed team spirit. Improperly run, they provide public validation of the attitude that it's them against you.

The purpose of a team meeting is to gather and disseminate information, not to discipline, solve problems, or seek the guilty. While there are forums for these activities, your team meetings are not among them. You want the complete cooperation of everyone present rather than defensiveness or withdrawal from those who feel like targets.

The agenda of a team meeting, shown in Exhibit 5.7, is invariant and follows a simple pattern: Information flows from you to your team, then from your team to you. You tell your team how the project is going. Are we on schedule and on budget, or are we slipping? Have there been any major changes of scope or direction?

Exhibit 5.7 Weekly Team Meeting Agenda

1. Presentation of project progress and outstanding issues.

2. Roundtable to determine progress last week, planned progress this week, achievements, and problems encountered.

3. Roundtable to review outstanding risks and identify new ones.

4. Roundtable to examine the scope and identify scope changes.

5. Fun.

What is the client's reaction to what we have delivered so far? What progress has been made on the major issues that are slowing the project up?

What you want from your team is to know how they are doing. In a roundtable, ask each team member in turn to describe last week's progress, next week's expected progress, and any issues or problems that have arisen. As you receive the reports, write them down. They will become part of your project status report.

Next, conduct two more roundtables, one to review the risks and one to identify scope changes. As part of the risk roundtable, briefly describe the outstanding risks, then ask each person in turn to comment on them or to raise any new risks. Most people will pass. You are looking for the nuggets of information that will alert you to a potential problem.

When you ask for scope changes, remind the team of the justification for the project, then ask them for anything they have observed that might threaten the benefits or that will not help to realize them. Again, most people will have no comment, but those who do will provide you with valuable indications that the project may be diverging from its original goals.

Once the meeting is over, identify those people who did not accomplish this week what they said last week they would. Some of these will not be a surprise: Fred was out sick for three days, Mary got pulled off on another assignment, and George attended a twoday convention on database technologies. For others, you will have no ready explanation. Invite those people inone at a timeto discuss why they are late and why they believe they will meet this week's target. Your goal here is not to discipline, but to gather information to support whatever actions, disciplinary or otherwise, you will want to take.

Above all, remember that team meetings provide you with a means for dealing with your people in an open, nonconfrontative atmosphere. Take advantage of this. Make the meeting an occasion to celebrate a success or recognize special effort. Bring doughnuts or muffins. Set aside part of the time to design a project logo or mascot. Take orders for T-shirts with some expression that will be meaningful to the team. Have fun. If you do not regard yourself as the fun type, appoint a "social director" and make sure that you participate in whatever foolishness arises.

What If?

The Client or Management Criticizes the Frequency of The Meetings.

Team meetings are a primary source of information on project progress as well as a means of monitoring the progress of your team building. Without them, your job will be tougher.

Action

Inform the client or your management that this project is yours and you will run it your way. Adopt whatever behavioral posture you deem appropriate, but make it clear that decisions on how the project will be run are yours alone.

Some Team Members Rarely or Never Attend The Meetings.

Not only will you find it harder to get activity status from these people, but their attitude is a challenge to your authority, your role, or both, and they will undermine your team-building efforts.

Actions

As soon as the pattern becomes apparent, notify all team members that attendance at the team meetings is not optional and that you expect them to be present, barring exceptional circumstances.

If the problem persists, confront the offenders and find out why they do not attend. Then examine the meetings to see if the criticisms are valid. Are the meetings too long? Do some members monopolize the floor? Is the status too frequent for the volume or quality of information that is exchanged?

If you determine that the meetings can be improved, make a commitment to improve them. In any case, insist on all team members' attendance.

Some Team Members Ask to be Excused on The Grounds That They Have Work to Complete.

As an occasional event, this request is probably reasonable, but if it becomes continual, you are undermining your own process and creating a special class of team member.

Action

If the request is infrequent and you know that the team member is on a tight deadline, grant the request. Otherwise do not.

Team Members Criticize The Meetings as a Waste of Time.

If team members do not see value in the meetings, they will find all sorts of excuses for not attending and the purpose of the meetings will be lost.

Actions

Review the conduct of the meetings to determine if there is any validity to the charges.

Review the section "Running Effective Meetings" in Chapter 6 to identify how to improve the quality of the meetings.

Regardless of what you decide to do, recognize that the purpose of the meetings is to help you manage the project. If they are fulfilling that goal, continue with them. If, on the other hand, you determine that you concur with the criticism, change the meetings by reducing their time, their frequency, or both.

Determine if the meetings can be restructured. For example, if you have two teams, one working on the technology architecture and one on business functionality, you may be boring half the people at any point in the meeting. It may make more sense to convene two meetings.