jump to navigation

Meetings: Please Make It Better August 27, 2008

Posted by Ian Tang in Uncategorized.
Tags:
trackback

I don’t know about you, I have been in more than my share of meetings that was a waste of time. My most useless one happened a couple years back; It was a meeting with 30+ developer & a project manager that got side-track for 40 minutes figuring out the 3 colors of the header for the main menu, which involved a discussion 2 1/2 people & decided to talk about it later. How crazy is that?

After that, I decided I will try not to waste other people’s time in meetings by:

1. Only invite the personnels that can contribute & call the people that you might need expertise (Let them know ahead of time)

2. Prepare for the meeting & sending purpose & agenda.

3. Follow the agenda & prevent sidetracking
- Check the time & revise
- Ask about the necessity of the particular discussion

4. Summarize of the meeting
- Quick header for discussed topics
- Decision & Change
- Action log

This can be useful for any detail/solution focused meetings.
Next time I will discuss the good part of meetings.

Comments»

1. Meetings: Must be Actionable « Soft Side of IT - September 1, 2008

[...] My last post showed how wasteful it can be. On the other hand, I had/hosted a meeting that ended in 15-20 min with an action plan to implement. It was to solve an ongoing bug in the system. [...]

2. Can We Move Logo a bit higher? « Soft Side of IT - September 5, 2008

[...] those request to the end of the meeting or you will end up like the meeting I had described in an earlier post. Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Ailge, Ethnographics and [...]