What are Agile Meetings & How to Manage Them

At work, we are involved in various projects and work with our colleagues as a team, for a certain period. Generally, a project is divided into multiple sub-tasks and each sub-task is allocated to a person by the team lead. This ensures the progress of the project is clear, smooth, and effective. But this process alone does not ensure the success of a project. To ensure quality, on-time delivery, and eventually success, you need to conduct meetings at regular intervals. By conducting meetings, you can know what is the overall status of the project, the status of each sub-task, difficulties encountered by team members, new ideas / alternative approaches for the project, etc. Also, you should ensure that your meetings are focused and do not turn into a chatting session. So, how to organize such a productive meeting? Of course, there are different ways in which you can conduct meetings. One such meeting is an agile framework which helps to increase the team’s productivity. Let us quickly take a look into this:

What are Agile Meetings?

Agile meetings initially were formed as a part of software development. But in recent times, this meeting has become a part of project management in all businesses. So, what is an agile meeting?

Agile meetings are conducted by considering a set of principles that are outlined in the form of a manifesto. Generally, agile involves working in a shorter time sprint, providing updates, planning tasks, discussing feedback from the client, and sharing other important information regarding the project. So, it’s all about iterative development, rather than handling a project in one swing.

Who takes part in the meeting:

Generally, when you are arranging for a meeting, you would first narrow down the persons who are to be a part of the meeting. Similarly, for agile meetings we have a list of participants who can be a part of these meetings:

1. Product Owner:

An integral part of the team is the Product Owner, as they make sure that scope, costs, and deadlines are met. It is the product owner’s responsibility to maximize product value by representing stakeholders, prioritizing the backlog, empowering the team, and maintaining Agile and Scrum processes.

The product owner is responsible for

• Managing stakeholders and driving value.
• Managing effective communication between the development team and stakeholders
• Providing the product vision to the development team
• Resolving conflicts and managing situations or escalation with stakeholders or development team members
• Backlog item prioritization
• Educating the development team on Scrum values, principles, and processes
• Educating stakeholders on the benefits of Scrum

A product owner also known as a Product manager is a person who gets progress updates from the team, provides suggestions on the ways to continue the project, and collaborates with the team to effectively complete the project with quality.

2. Project Manager:

The project manager is motivated, organized, and goal-oriented. He or she understands what projects have in common, as well as his or her strategic role in how organizations succeed, learn, and change. It is a project manager’s job to start, plan, design, and manage a project from start to finish.

A Project Manager’s duties include the following:

• Planning, organizing, and completing a project
• Financial reporting
• Making a project charter
• Management of resources
• Risk Management
• Change Management
• Scheduling
• Cost estimation and budget development
• Documentation quality control
• Monitoring key performance indicators
• Management of vendors
• Managing reports and other important documents

3. The development team:

The development team includes members who develop products or provide services in a company. A well-known thing is that a development team in a software company is the one that develops apps/software tools. This team provides valuable insights when involved in the meeting. They are also the team who actually takes the project forward. So, all the members of this team should take part in the meeting.

4. Scrum Master:

The Scrum master is a meeting leader who makes sure that all team members in the meeting follow the practices of Scrum methodology. They also help the team to stay focused on the meeting topics, answer their questions and offer guidance related to the Scrum process.

5. Invested People:

These are the people who have an interest in the project’s progress but are not involved directly. This includes professionals like managers who take a look into how efficiently and effectively teams work, investors/clients who invest money into the project or company, etc. Sometimes, there may be employees who are interested to attend Agile meetings even though they are not part of the development team. This is because they are interested to learn more about their company and discover new methods for accomplishing tasks.

Types of Agile meetings:

There are four main types of agile meetings which are listed below:

1. Sprint planning:

Sprint planning is generally conducted at the beginning of a sprint. In this meeting, the project leader prioritizes the task to be focused on by the team and completed in the sprint. The team then plans the duration for each task, fixes the goals of each task, and ways to achieve the goals. Because of these discussions, the sprint planning takes place for a longer time which may be close to four hours.

2. Daily stand-up:

The most frequent and also the shortest meeting in the agile framework is the daily stand-up meeting. In daily stand-up, the details relating to a project like a task that was accomplished yesterday, a task planned for today, difficulties faced by the team members for accomplishing the task, etc. are discussed with each team member. This also provides up-to-date progress of the project for the sprint. Conducting daily stand-up can also avoid problems and improves the productivity duration of the sprint. The daily stand-up can take a shorter duration around 15-20 mins.

3. Sprint review:

This meeting is conducted to review and exhibit the accomplishments of all the team members. At the review, each team member can exhibit the task they have completed during the sprint. This is also an opportunity for providing feedback. A meeting leader can also invite interested parties and product owners to sprint reviews so they can discuss how the team’s accomplished task fits into the project guidelines. The sprint review is generally conducted at the end of each sprint or after reaching project milestones. Sprint reviews can be formal or casual based on the preference of the team. Generally, this review often lasts between one to two hours.

4. Sprint retrospective:

The sprint retrospective is conducted so that the team involved with the sprint gets a chance to discuss it in detail. The team discusses successful things during the sprint and what areas may benefit from improvement. This provides an idea for the team to determine how to perform future sprints which can increase productivity and prevent issues. Sometimes, even interested parties and product owners can also offer opinions in this meeting such as ways that the team can follow to improve workflow and other processes. The sprint retrospective usually happens at the end of a sprint and can last for an hour and a half.

How to manage Agile meetings:

Managing a meeting effectively is quite a challenging task. That too agile meetings need to be managed effectively. So, how to do that? Not just agile meetings, the below tips will be suitable for managing any meeting:

(i) Fix and focus the topics:

Whenever you conduct a meeting, first, focus on a few specific topics. This saves time for all the members taking part in the meeting and also helps the team to concentrate on important items. So, try to avoid discussions/topics which go away from the focus of the meeting topic.

(ii) Provide feedback:

Make sure to review the tasks completed frequently and provide positive feedback to motivate the team members. Also, in case, there is a need for improvement, constructive feedback can also be provided. This can make the team members improve further. Doing this frequently can build a strong working relationship.

(iii) Fix the goal:

It is very important to develop goals for any meeting. This in turn can help you in defining the topics to be focussed on in the meeting. Based on the goal and topics, you can prepare questions, review the tasks, etc. in the meeting.

(iv) Lend an ear:

Listening is an essential part of communication. Especially in meetings, your listening matters. So, patiently listen to what each team member says. Similarly, once you ask a question, wait for the response from the team members and then speak. This can help you in understanding the difficulties of team members while handling the project, their thoughts, fixing an issue, further improvement, etc.

Though there are many ways to conduct agile meetings, we have provided a quick overview of agile meetings and how to conduct the meeting, and manage them effectively and easily.