- Keep status meetings to .5 hour, but do them every week
- Establish a natural way for the team to share what everyone is doing — eating together, or tasks we all do together — while protecting personal time to think and work individually
- Set up a team mailing list and liberally copy everyone on everything; make it easy to filter
- Have one place for everyone to go to see what is the next action
- Folders to set up
- For important meetings, supply each member of the team with
– 1. Discover
– 2. Define
– 3. Design
– 4. Develop
– 5. Deploy
– archive
– assets
– financial
– project management
— agendas
— status reports
— proposals & SOWs
– explicitly stated objectives
– the agenda
– a list of attendees and their roles
– maps and necessary logistics
– a list of tasks needed to prep for the meeting
Not sure where this idea came from, but I got it from Crystal Kubitsky at CIM…
She kept track of and collected all of the ideas that were nixed for one reason or another while moving towards the current release. (So, you could review the good ideas when you started the next release.)
Couple other practices I find valuable:
When deadlines are tight: daily 15-minute standing (literally, standing-up) status meetings. Purpose is strictly to raise red flags and determine what needs to shift to resolve them. If it’s not a red flag,table it for another conversation.
Project stages: here are the five thatt ALWAYS work, in my experience:
-Discover
-Define
-Design
-Develop
-Deploy
Thank you list: from the resource manager to your contact in legal to the security guard who gave you quarters when you needed to park fast. It’s worth remembering the large and small things that worked right when you are staffing the next engagement.