Chapter 2

Meeting Management Best Practices

In This Chapter:

• Establish the Meeting Foundation

• Design the Meeting to Meet the Objectives

• Determine the Meeting Participants

• Prepare the Meeting Agenda

• Open the Meeting

• Establish Meeting Ground Rules

• Conduct the Meeting Using Appropriate Facilitation Techniques

• Close the Meeting

• Followup after the Meeting

Meeting management skills are often undervalued and underrated in the business environment, even though meetings consume so much valuable time and so many critical resources. Why is so little effort expended to make meetings more effective? Here are a few reasons to consider:

• Business leaders do not recognize the relationship between ineffective meetings and the productivity measures of their organization.

• Mid-level managers do not have the knowledge or the skills needed to plan, conduct, and facilitate an effective meeting and then follow up on decisions.

• Project managers and business analysts do not appreciate the importance of planning a meeting for better results.

• The cost drain from ineffective meetings is not recognized.

• Management does not hold functional managers, business analysts, project managers, or other persons accountable for the impacts of ineffective meetings.

Although the business analyst facilitates multiple types of meetings, following some basic steps results in effective and efficient use of participants’ time and a positive outcome for everyone. Note: Although these steps appear to be conducted sequentially, in practice they are likely to be completed iteratively:

1. Establish the meeting foundation.

2. Design the meeting to meet the objectives.

3. Determine the meeting participants.

4. Prepare the meeting agenda.

5. Open the meeting.

6. Establish meeting ground rules.

7. Conduct the meeting using appropriate facilitation techniques.

8. Close the meeting.

9. Follow up after the meeting.

Each step is explained briefly in the sections that follow.

Establish the Meeting Foundation

Before you jump into planning the meeting, determine the objectives and purpose of the meeting by answering the following questions:

• Describe the purpose or goal of the meeting—Why have you decided to have a meeting?

• Define the meeting objectives—How will the goal be achieved?

• Describe the desired outcome of the meeting—What product or deliverable will be produced or decision made that constitutes meeting success?

• Determine how to measure the effectiveness of the meeting—How will you measure the success of the meeting?

• Clearly understand who needs the meeting deliverables—Who will use the output?

• Determine the use of the meeting deliverables—How will the output be used to add value to the project?

Design the Meeting to Meet the Objectives

Once the meeting’s purpose, objectives, and outcomes are well understood, the business analyst determines the most appropriate meeting type from among the alternatives presented in the preceding chapter. Do not hold a formal meeting with a large number of participants when a small, informal working session will accomplish the meeting objectives. Keep in mind the cost of large meetings, the difficulty in reaching consensus when the group is large, and the value of small-group interactions. All the people invited to the meeting will expect ample time to air their viewpoints and participate fully in the discussion and the decisions.

The business analyst designs the meeting on the basis of the objectives and purpose of the session. Preparations for an informal working session are likely to be less rigorous than preparations for a formal requirements elicitation workshop. But no matter how small or informal the meeting, success is directly related to adequate meeting preparation.

Determine the Meeting Participants

Identify the appropriate participants to be invited to the meeting. Ensure that they have been authorized to dedicate time to your effort and that they are empowered not only to represent their organization but also to make decisions and commitments on behalf of it. When selecting meeting participants, consider the experience level, knowledge and skills, and availability of the persons you need to accomplish the meeting objectives.

Ensure that all stakeholders who will be affected by the outcome of the meeting are represented, including members of management, business unit representatives, technical experts, and virtual team members. It is almost always necessary for the business analyst to include technical representatives and the project manager in requirements sessions in which key decisions are to be made. Collaborating with others when building the meeting attendee list is a good practice. As a courtesy, try to speak with participants before they receive your meeting invitation so that they will not be surprised. This small gesture goes a long way in building trust among the team members.

If the meeting requires large participation, it is likely that the meeting must be scheduled far in advance so that key attendees can block out the time in their calendars. Considerations include company, organization, and department calendars, as well as individual commitments and meeting room availability. The organization’s meeting culture must also be considered. The business analyst should take into account cultural considerations like:

• Meeting tolerance. Don’t expect participants to be taken away from their business unit for meetings too often, such as more than two or three days in a week.

• Political agendas. Conduct several meeting preparation interviews with key members of management and others who are influential within the organization to avoid political hazards. Political mistakes can be devastating to the effort to build a collaborative environment.

• Meeting history. There might be some unwritten rules about meetings. Again, conduct premeeting interviews to learn the meeting norms.

• Team collaboration. Take into account the amount of collaboration and team spirit that you have been able to engender to this point. Schedule less important meetings when the group is just coming together and critical meetings after you have had a chance to work with the group and gain its trust.

• Management structure. Be sure to respect the chain of command when considering the attendees. In addition, make sure you have management approval to use their resources to capture, document, and validate requirements.

Prepare the Meeting Agenda

An agenda is a structured set of activities designed to produce the work products that will achieve the meeting objectives. There are two types of agendas:

• Meeting agenda. An agenda used by meeting participants that includes the meeting topics, activities, presenters, and timelines.

• Facilitator agenda. An extension of the meeting agenda that includes the facilitation approach, tools, and techniques used for each meeting topic to ensure that meeting objectives are met.

Knowing the purpose of the meeting is the first step in structuring the agenda. Having a firm idea of where you want to be by the end of the meeting suggests what must be covered during the meeting. The business analyst uses a very different set of agenda items to develop requirement functions or features than he uses to prioritize predefined requirements. Each step in reaching the desired meeting outcome is thought through carefully to determine the specific activity, how it will be facilitated, and the amount of time needed. Steps include:

• Establish how long the meeting is to last; shorter is better than longer.

• List the agenda items that need to be covered or process steps that need to occur.

• Determine the facilitation technique to be used for each agenda item.

• Build in time for key experts to be heard.

• Estimate how long each item will take, factoring in time for dialogue.

• Leave a minimum of 15 minutes at the end for summary and agreement on what comes next.

If, after completing these steps, the agenda clearly requires more time, revise it accordingly. You might need to adjust the length of the meeting or cut back on what you expect to accomplish. Keep in mind that critical thinking requires more time than what is typically allowed, especially if there is controversy. In addition, as the number of meeting participants increases, you need more generous time allotments so that everyone can participate. Opportunities to voice an opinion, ask questions, and explain reasons behind positions are critical to developing and achieving consensus. Shortcuts at this point could cause looping back or gridlock.

To build a collaborative environment even before the meeting, enlist key participants to assist in developing the agenda, especially the project manager, technical lead, lead business representative, and key subject matter experts. Clearly state the overall outcome to be achieved at the end of the meeting and any preparation the participants are expected to complete before the meeting. Carter McNamara, MBA, Ph.D., of Authenticity Consulting, LLC, offers these tips for designing effective agendas:¹

• Include something in the agenda for participants to do right away so they come on time and get involved early.

• Next to each major topic, include the type of action needed, the type of output expected (decision, vote, action assigned to someone), and time estimates for addressing each topic.

• Don’t overdesign meetings; be willing to change the meeting agenda if members are making progress with certain agenda items.

• Think about how you label an event so people come in with that global-use mind set. It might pay to have a short dialogue around the meeting title to develop a common mind set among attendees, particularly if they include representatives from various cultures.

Because the business analyst designs each meeting to produce an output or a deliverable, the stakes are high. Planning an effective requirements elicitation, analysis, specification, or validation meeting requires the business analyst to prepare extensively for each event to accomplish the following:

• Determine the appropriate requirements artifacts to be produced as a result of the meeting, including the method, tools, and templates that will be used. (An artifact is a requirement work product, such as a document, table, matrix, or diagram.)

• Select the appropriate decision process to be used to arrive at consensus on the meeting results.

• Design the appropriate facilitation activities and techniques for use to guide the participants to discover, create, and verify requirements.

• Determine how to facilitate the interaction among meeting participants; for example, will the participants break out into small groups or work as a whole?

• Determine the appropriate visual media to facilitate understanding and consensus, such as flip charts, posters, sticky notes, cards on the wall, diagrams, and other visual aids.

• Ensure that the participants have prepared for the meeting, including possibly creating straw man work products to be used as a starting point to create requirements deliverables.

Although many books on meeting planning are available, there are a few special considerations for the business analyst. While making room reservations and sending out invitations, the business analyst is also finalizing the facilitator agenda that contains the tools, templates, visuals, supplies, and facilitation techniques to be used to facilitate each agenda item. If the outcome of the meeting is complex, the business analyst almost always works with small groups to create a draft version of the deliverables before the meeting and then facilitates the review and refinement of the deliverable during the meeting with the larger group. In addition, the business analyst confirms that the appropriate business and technical representatives will be available to attend the meeting and follow-up sessions. If not, the meeting should be rescheduled. For significant meetings, the business analyst invites the participants under the signature of the project or business sponsor. Attachments to the workshop invitation include a finalized agenda and summary-level project documents, which the participants should review before the meeting.

The setup of the room is important to the success of a requirements elicitation meeting. Arrange the room for optimal efficiency and comfort during the session. For a requirements elicitation workshop, a U-shape setup (Figure 2-1) is the best possible setup to ensure effective communication and participation of all workshop attendees.

Figure 2-1—Room Setup

Table 2-1 has tips for organizing a formal workshop.

Table 2-1—Tips for Organizing a Formal Workshop

Open the Meeting

As participants arrive for the meeting, greet them by name and make introductions. Set the precedent by starting the meeting on time, even if some participants have not arrived. Introduce yourself and describe your role as the business analyst and meeting facilitator. Also introduce other key members who helped to prepare for the meeting, as well as those who will help conduct the meeting and capture the information. Review the agenda and discuss the goals of the meeting to get everyone prepared for the work ahead. Ask if the agenda as structured will meet everyone’s expectations. If not, ask if there are any recommended adjustments to the agenda. Be prepared to incorporate the recommendations if they would help to achieve the meeting objectives. This approach secures everyone’s agreement to the agenda. You might even ask that everyone help manage the group’s time by keeping to the agenda. Review the project objectives, relate the meeting to the project objectives, and briefly discuss expected follow-on activities. Then ask the members to introduce themselves. If it is the first meeting of the group, plan a warm-up activity that helps the team members get to know each other.

Before plunging into the agenda, define roles and responsibilities and discuss how the group will work together in the future. Emphasize the need for everyone to participate, contribute to understanding issues and problems, and help drive the group to consensus decisions.

Establish Meeting Ground Rules

Setting ground rules before the meeting work begins is helpful, especially for working sessions of any length. Team ground rules are agreements made by the team members that manage how they will interact, with the aim of continually improving the group’s ability to work as a team. They are typically the operating standards that determine how people conduct their discussions and make their decisions. At the beginning of the meeting, the business analyst facilitates a discussion on the ground rules so that the group formulates its own operating standards. The facilitator might ask, “What team operating agreements should we adopt to make our work more efficient and of higher quality?” Or, simply, “What are some important guidelines we should all keep in mind as we work together in this and future meetings?” Use the multivote technique (described in Chapter 4) to gain approval of the rules if there are too many to deal with effectively. The group should review and revise the ground rules as needed. Typical ground rules are listed in Table 2-2.

Table 2-2—Typical Meeting Ground Rules

Carter McNamara has some tips for establishing ground rules.²They are presented in Table 2-3.

Table 2-3—Tips for Establishing Ground Rules

Conduct the Meeting Using Appropriate Facilitation Techniques

When facilitating the meeting, the business analyst uses the agenda as a powerful tool to stay on track and manage the group’s time to achieve the desired outcome. If it appears that an agenda item will take longer than anticipated, the business analyst stops the meeting and explains that the meeting agenda agreed to is in jeopardy. The facilitator does not simply let the time overrun but instead presents the group with these obvious options:

• Close down the current discussion within a few minutes to move on with the agenda (which is the best option if the matter under discussion is close to closure).

• Table later agenda items to allow more time to bring the current discussion to closure (which is preferred if further agenda items depend on resolution of the matter at hand).

• End the discussion and reschedule it on the agenda of a future meeting (which is preferred if there are other, more pressing agenda items).

After the decision is made, the business analyst adjusts the agenda and resumes facilitating the meeting.

During the meeting, a considerable amount of information is verbalized and discussed. The business analyst uses the flip chart as an essential facilitation tool. Chapter 4 presents some tips for using flip charts. The facilitator uses chart writing to:

• Document the work of the group.

• Encourage participants to make corrections or ask for clarification.

• Capture issues, risks, constraints, and assumptions.

• Park items of interest to become future agenda items; be sure to follow up with these items, or participants will not be motivated to continue their commitment to the effort.

• Organize the discussion by capturing wording and asking for questions or suggestions, proposing alternatives, combining ideas, depicting consequences, narrowing choices, restating ideas, and summarizing decisions.

Close the Meeting

There are several guidelines for the business analyst to follow when closing sessions:

• Always close the meeting on time.

• Review the meeting’s purpose, and progress toward achieving meeting objectives.

• Review next steps: disposition of issues, action items, and parked items.

• Set the date, time, and place for the next meeting.

• Evaluate the success of the meeting, using a simple scale of 1–7, where a rating of 7 means expectations were exceeded and 1 means the meeting was ineffective. Quickly go around the room asking for the meeting rating. Note: This is an evaluation of how the group worked together to achieve the meeting’s purpose, not of how the facilitator performed.

• Collect lessons learned for meeting improvement; quickly go around the room asking for comments—”What worked well?” “What can we do better for the next meeting?”

Followup after the Meeting

The work accomplished at the meeting often requires a great deal of refinement by the business analyst. Not only does the requirements information need to be captured in a structured, usable manner, but further review and refinement are also likely required to convert the information into mature requirements documentation. An iterative approach to requirements development—short working sessions with speedy information capture and feedback sessions—is the best defense against requirements risks. It is important that the participants involved in creating the requirements also be involved in approving changes and updates to the requirements.