Ways to improve meetings held for conflict / issue resolution

What I write below may seem like common sense, the kind of stuff that you would get if you were to sit back and think about how to do a meeting. This is even more important if you were to read my previous post (Reducing the number of meetings held) about how to make an effort to reduce the number of meetings that are held, which can suck up the time available with the development and testing teams. In addition, with the number of meetings being held being high, the continuous time that the teams need when they are in the middle of something gets interrupted and this can have an incredibly bad effect on productivity.
During the tension and stress of an ongoing software development cycle, teams need to resolve issues fast. As a result, when there is some kind of issue that need resolution, teams forget all the basic concepts of how to setup a meeting, what are the preliminary steps that need to be done before starting a meeting, and the net result is that even though conflicts are resolved or atleast progress made, the teams end up spending a large amount of individual time on these meetings; and we know the impact this has on the team productivity.
So what is to be done in the case of some conflict or issue that needs to be resolved. Even though it may seem logical to quickly call a meeting to get a solution for the issue, this method should be retained only for those issues that are of a show-stopper nature (for example, a defect that is stopping the launching of the application, or something equally similar). In most other cases, if you spent a bit of time, you would realize that an hour or so before the meeting can help make the meeting more productive. What are some of the steps that could be done before the meeting ? In the below steps, there may be multiple people who may need to be consulted depending on the steps (these could be team leads, project manager, development manager, quality manager, etc)
- For the issue, need to identify the people who are most competent in the issue and who would be able to contribute the maximum to this issue
- For these people, need to identify whether they are available or are involved in some other critical issue. If they are so heavily involved that it would not be good to get them out of whatever they are doing, then somebody else who can provide a solution or inputs would be needed to be identified.
- Next, a brief write-up about what the issue is would need to be written up, especially focusing on what the problem and if there are any elements of a possible solution; and this would need to be sent out atleast an hour or more so before the meeting.
- Before sending out these items, the meeting that needs to be setup should also make it clear as to who all is important for the meeting, and who would be optional for the meeting. What this does is to give team members a say in whether they need to come for the meeting or not. In most cases, what would happen is that team members who are on the optional list would evaluate whether they can contribute or not and decide accordingly. This atleast helps in saving time for those who decide not to come, and even those who come for the meeting are more informed, which makes for a quicker meeting and hence more saving of time. 

Ensuring the minimum number of meetings necessary ...

In software companies, if there is one item that is necessary, it is the concept of meetings. Meetings are the life blood of companies, and sometimes, one feels that the number of meetings that are held are excessive. In my experience, I have had developers and testers coming and complaining that the number of meetings that they are being invited to is so excessive that they feel the time involved for work is getting impacted. Even further, when a person is getting into the core of their work - whether it being the design of a new feature, or the solution of a difficult defect, or the execution of a difficult test case, facing a break in between is guaranteed to rankle. And there are numerous meetings where the team members (developers / testers / others) could be called for meetings, where it would seem that they are necessary.
Some of these meetings could be:
- Feature discussion meetings (numerous)
- Schedule planning meetings
- Task definition meetings and estimation
- Issue resolution meetings
- Daily / Periodic status meetings
- Add your own set of meetings here
You get the idea. It can be pretty frustrating. I have seen weeks where there were atleast 4-5 meetings per day, and even though you would think that these meetings are important, they do cause other problems. And at some point, if the people invited for these meetings start feeling that the subject of the meeting is not important for them, then you will start getting resistance in ensuring that these meetings are held.

So what is the solution ? There is no magic bullet, no quick solution I can give that will reduce the number of meetings you need to do. It requires careful planning, discussions between the respective managers (such as the project / program manager, the development manager, and the testing manager). Some of the questions that need to be asked before a meeting is set are the following (and there would be other questions that are not in the list below, it is just an indicator of the thinking that needs to happen):
1. The invitee list for the meeting needs to be evaluated. Is each person really necessary for the meeting. Can some people be marked optional, so that they can determine for themselves whether it is necessary.
2. If there are some minor issues that could be settled in a meeting, but could also be settled through a quick phone call or a quick hallway discussion, then that makes sense. In many issues, one person really needs to make a call, and the others need to just be informed. In such cases, having a meeting is really not necessary.
3. Is the issue really necessary to be discussed urgently ? What this means is, if the meeting is pushed out by a couple of days or a week, would it still be fine ? If so, then an alternate would be to postpone the meeting and see whether the issue can be resolved through phone calls or an email discussion.
4. In some meetings, the discussion is about nobody willing to take a quick call, or because there are no real solutions. In such cases, the meeting in a number of cases will fail or another meeting will need to be held. It would be better to prepare a solution or a note that clarifies issues, and then send that out. In many cases, this would be accepted by most of the people who have the authority to accept it.

Too many meetings: Calculate total spent of people in the meeting and highlight ..

It's a tricky situation. Your boss or other senior managers like to have a number of meetings on all issues and this gives you less time do your job. But how do you get them to change this strategy. We had a situation similar to this one where the boss was trying to have a number of meetings on different topics, and it was getting uncomfortable. On the other hand, there was also the oft stated position by many members of the team that they did not know about what was happening with regard to company strategy, and felt detached from the policies and steps being taken by the company, and this was expressed in internal surveys carried out by the company.
So, meetings can happen on many basis:
- When there is a chance in strategy, meetings would be held to explain what has happened and invite people to ask questions
- When there are senior management officials wanting to meet the team, there would be meetings to showcase strategy and status, and a lot of preparations to fine-tune
- Frequent meetings to walk through ongoing matters, including when the boss has ideas that he is looking to sound off from his direct managers or from the extended team
- Meetings where the boss is traveling to other geographic locations of the company and wants to talk about strategy before doing this traveling
- Meetings where the boss has been talking to senior management and wants to share feedback from such meetings, even when the meetings are of an interim nature
- And so on ...

Now, if you look at the set of meetings above, there are many that would seem correct and fine, and part of sharing ideas and strategy in the organization down the line. And this is what the boss would feel, that all these meetings were necessary and to ensure that people felt connected with what the group and the organization was doing. However, there is a fine line where the meetings go beyond what was necessary and start moving into the arena of time wasting. This is true in a number of organizations, although the scale of the time being wasted can differ. The problem with a situation like this is that this spoils the mood for all meetings, where even genuine meetings seem like a wastage of time, connected to the other meetings which are a genuine waste of time. And since these meetings are held by the manager or by senior managers, it is frustrating that one cannot stop such meetings.
There was one approach that was discovered about how to stop such meetings, or atleast ensure that there was a realization that such meetings are causing problems with the team and reducing the amount of time that can spent in more genuine work. There was an excellent article in a publication that talked about the amount of time that was spent in meetings, and suggested that for every meeting, there would be a clock that measures the amount of time spent, and then does a summary of time spent in such meetings, and time spent for each such person. Given that the article was suggesting that this would lead to a rise in productivity, we managed to ensure that another senior manager circulated this article, and we started following this principle. It was not good for us to not be able to raise this issue directly, but once we started measuring the amount of time spent in such meetings and showing the results on a monthly basis, we could see that there was a prioritization of such meetings, and things got better to some extent.