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I don't care whether the meeting is formal or a chat, sitting or standing, with or without alcoholic beverages. If there's no agenda, it's a waste of my time. Life is too short to tolerate people who can't organize their thoughts enough to write, distribute and follow an agenda. Doing so just proves the leader to be a disorganized idiot who has no respect for others' time.
Will Rogers never met me.
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I believe, One can understand better in face to face meetings rather than Phone/Skype mattings because expressions are speaks louder than words
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The only reason people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory.
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I thought the whole point of Skype was you "can" see their face.
In today's world of software whatever, face to face is not always possible. I deal with Russian software engineers on a weekly basis. Obviously, we don't meet face to face; not sure if I really want to, either.
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Agree
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The only reason people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory.
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Quote: "Skype / video call meetings", "Phone / voice meetings (person to person or conference call)", "Chat / message app meetings"
For me, these seem to be "Way to conduct a Meeting", not "Type of Meeting". So, I think these options doesn't fit in the expected answers category.
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I didn't see the dilemma -
Type of Meeting:
Skype: remote user, still want face to face to read inflections.
Phone: not local and need to communicate verbally but body language not relevant.
Chat: Text based dialog in near real time is sufficient.
Cheers.
"Religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses." - Arthur C. Clarke
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Quick because long meetings invariantly are foggy or escalate in a opinion clash.
Formal because noone likes formal meetings - that is good, they will last less.
Focussed beuause I'm no philosopher, I have problems that need solutions, not debates.
Quick and formal meetings with clear agendas actually help solving problems and deciding a course of action, they allow to take notes and exchange opinions and they give some preparatory time to gather documentation and ideas.
EDIT: fixed a bucketful of typos.
modified 9-Dec-14 5:40am.
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A formal meeting is the only thing that reasonably captures requirements and has someone writing things down.
Things slip through the cracks of casual deskside chats too often.
I can't count the number of times I've said or heard "Remember, we talked about soandso?"
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In my project admin days I was the "someone" who wrote things down and sent it around.
Recently I worked for a company that held hours-long formal meetings without minute-taking. You can imagine the hilarity that ensued in the morning standups as we argued about what was decided in the grooming 3 weeks ago.
Current company holds 2 scrums a week and a summary is sent out. I like it
Casual deskside chats can work when followed up by an e-mail "Just to confirm our recent chat about x and y"
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Long as it's on paper eventually
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Working on a very narrow field product suite, there are 8 people in my office area that work on this system. We all support all sites and servers, but we each are SME's for a particular area.
We have a regularly scheduled department meeting every Monday at 9:00 AM (there are 3 team members that are in alternate locations, so they call in).
So... it works for us. Oh.. and I'm working from home today, so this is being typed while on the Monday conference call.
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That's not what the Scrum stand-up is for, though you could use that time to alert a colleague that you'll want some time to discuss a particular task with him later. This can give the colleague time to familiarize himself with the task and maybe gather references as necessary.
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Agreed.
Scrum stand-up style, while a team 'huddle' in rugby to try and get the ball down-field, they're not casually discussing play options, they're *doing* THE play option at hand.
Scrum stand-up style meetings, while a team 'huddle', is not what most conclude a meeting is ~ gather and discuss things longer than a 30-60 second snapshot.
Scrum stand-up style Gathering is more accurate.
Report on your current day's work in 30 ~ 60 seconds.
Post-Scrum: Project Mgmt briefly touches on a top-focus issue and/or checks to ensure the sprint at hand is on target.
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The poll says "Scrum stand-up style", not "Scrum stand-up".
In any case, I agree that this style of meeting isn't appropriate for discussions, as standups are intentionally brief.
/ravi
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PIEBALDconsult wrote: That's not what the Scrum stand-up is for, ...
True, but it is a meeting that is on your schedule, you know what to expect from it, by definition it is a short meeting, you interact briefly with several people on just your project, the results can be informative, it is (hopefully) not disruptive to your plan for the remainder of the day, and you can get the hell out and back to what you wanted to work on.
That sounds like a perfect meeting to me.
I'm retired. There's a nap for that...
- Harvey
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H.Brydon wrote: That sounds like a perfect meeting to me.
Pretty good, but usually no food, not enough chicks.
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But it's not a meeting to "discuss" tasks.
In-fact, there should be little to no discussion in a daily stand-up meeting.
Everyone should stick to say what they've done, what they're going to do and if they have any impediments, period.
Any technical discussions should be taken offline only with the relevant parties.
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So at a Scrum stand up you don't discuss the tasks? At all?
cheers
Chris Maunder
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and most are highly unproductive, even the quick 15 minute stand ups I have to do.
If you have to have a meeting, then they should be 20 minutes max and should be very specific in topic and attendees.
If you have a bunch of boring sh*t to say, then do it in an email, so I can at least delete it without reading it.
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They're not scheduled in anyone's calendar. It's fine if I'm the one doing the wandering, but when someone else wonders-over-to-my-desk for a chat that I know's going to last 15 minutes or more (or even just two minutes), then I am wretched away from the work I'm trying to do, and it takes me forever to get back into the groove after the person's left... assuming that this "chat" hasn't resulted in my priorities changing and me being pulled off the task I was in the middle of.
Exactly the same reasoning applies to IM and Chat meetings - I hate it when people Skype me while I'm busy.
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I agree with this. For me though, I don't have an option. Most people don't quite understand we have to actually think to do our job, and it's casual or bust. Or when we do set a time, nobody shows up for it. So... casual is better than nothing. But I do agree with your point.
Jeremy Falcon
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As a developer I also hate the interruption that Skype/Lync generates. Calling people see you at your desk and assume you are available to answer. Wander over to the desk is just as bad as they "hover" assuming that within a minute you will be free.
My ideal meeting is book me for tomorrow, and make sure you have a large whiteboard
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Graham Downs wrote: assuming that this "chat" hasn't resulted in my priorities changing and me being pulled off the task I was in the middle of. Which, by definition, means that you're working on something of higher priority making the interaction a good thing.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | "As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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