meetings

Agile team in a meeting Does Agile Have Too Many Meetings?

Because agile favors lots of short meetings, it may seem like they take up a lot more time. But when you compare it to time spent meeting in the pre-agile days, it's usually actually less. However, this doesn’t mean all meetings you attend are useful. Here are a few tips for deciding if all your meetings are necessary.

Jeffery Payne's picture
Jeffery Payne
A manager and an employee having a one-on-one meeting One-on-Ones: A Framework for Feedback

Regular one-on-one meetings between a manager and employee are a forum to provide safe, timely feedback. They can be short or longer, but you should discuss successes, challenges, and how to improve. Having a framework for the conversation helps you make sure that the meetings don’t routinely become chat sessions.

Steve Berczuk's picture
Steve Berczuk
Software team in a meeting The Myth of Too Many Scrum Meetings

A common complaint in organizations adopting Scrum is that Scrum has too many meetings. However, people may not be considering all the time they spent meeting before Scrum—and how effective that time really was. As long as you keep meetings focused, people should waste less time in meetings than they did before Scrum.

Steve Berczuk's picture
Steve Berczuk
Agile team having a productive meeting Getting the Most out of Your Agile Meetings

One of the most common complaints of any software team during a retrospective is the issue of too many meetings. Agile ceremonies can provide a lot of value to the team, but only when they're done correctly. Here are four ways to get the most out of meetings, avoid wasting time, and gain value for everyone involved.

Alan Crouch's picture
Alan Crouch
A manager and employee having a one-on-one meeting Alleviate Employees’ Stress through One-on-Ones

Simply having one-on-ones because they’re expected is not enough to realize their potential. To make one-on-ones effective, as the manager, you’ve got to be available, prepared, and engaged. It has to be more than a one-way status update. Here's how to use these meetings to promote trust, growth, and creativity.

Jason Wick's picture
Jason Wick
Software professionals in a meeting How to Appear Smart in a Meeting

If you want to convey the impression that you’re smart in a meeting, you’d better make sure to convey that impression outside the meeting as well, because that’s the image of you that people will carry. Don't try any gimmicks or go in with a plan to ask certain questions or show off. Just follow these simple tips.

Naomi Karten's picture
Naomi Karten
Many brightly colored sticky notes and markers on a table, photo by Frans Van Heerden Refining Your Scrum Planning Meetings

Scrum events are meant to be productive opportunities for collaboration that replace more tedious, wasteful meetings. If you find your planning meetings becoming passive events where no one is asking questions or actively seeking to understand the backlog, the problem might be in the execution or the preparation.

Steve Berczuk's picture
Steve Berczuk
Globe with locations plotted on it For Distributed Team Success, Think Differently about When

For distributed teams, activities usually get scheduled based on constraints such as availability and time zone, but people don’t often take into account when the most effective time to meet would be. Neglecting people’s work tendencies and schedule preferences could make it harder for the team to be successful.

Steve Berczuk's picture
Steve Berczuk