No chairs in meetings (1 Viewer)

Only thing worse is a conference call.

Oh and...

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This is my work life.

 
In the Agile Project Management Methodology there's a concept called a "Daily Stand Up". It's a 15-minute meeting once per day. In the old days we actually stood up for them and they were really productive and rarely lasted 15 minutes.

Over the years I find fewer and fewer people actually "stand up" for the Daily Stand Up. They aren't nearly as productive as they were 10 years ago and most of them last upwards of an hour with people rambling and continuously having to be brought back on topic.

So yeah, meetings with no chairs work.

We do that where I work. Before, like you, it was pretty good. Now, it's a total shirt show and we have a micro-manager as a PM.

Don't get me started on the whole scrum/scrum master thing. I may commit horrible acts.
 
Those who called the meeting and those in control of when the meeting ends have to stand. All those who are stuck there until they are dismissed get to sit.
 
Project Manager here, and I will say I HATE meetings, I try to avoid them as much as I can though its the bane of my existence. I dunno if stand up meetings would work with me because I work from home or either the road but I like the idea. Our PMO has a daily scrum that last no longer than 30 minutes, usually can wrap in 15 minutes with 4 total PM's.

I have weekly meetings with the client if its a big project and schedule those for 30 minutes and 30 minutes only, I send the agenda and tell them this is what we are covering, I encourage YOU to have an internal meeting and discus matters and you can bring any lingering questions and we can cover them under the respective category. I can knock out a weekly meeting in 15 minutes if they play by my rules. Sometimes the Project Manager on the opposite side wants to play who has the biggest ruler, I had one tell me one time as I was announcing we had 2 minutes left and I need to wrap this meeting as I cannot go over and he proceeded to tell me he had two minutes left and "I WILL" utilize those minutes. I let him have his two minutes to argue with his team over internal matters that didn't have squat to do with us. People like that I have no time for, it was clear his team and himself were not doing there job but wanted to leach my time to do their job, yeah he sucked.

A fellow Pm who worked with me, he ran his meetings by reading the darn project plan every week, we are a lean company, so sometimes the VP's will be stakeholders, as they were for his project and they were like what the hell.....he no longer works with us. When it comes to meetings, I find people just dont have common sense, sadly it just doesnt exist much out there and you darn sure cant teach that.
 
In the Agile Project Management Methodology
The current bane of my existence... the contractors who came in to teach us to be agile call the meetings scrums, and call themselves scrum masters. I want to smack them across the face so bad. It is a good thing I work from home. Every since they came in, my workload has actually increased because all of the freaking micromanagement and extra documentation I have to produce.

As for no chairs, that'd be hard with laptops.
 
The current bane of my existence... the contractors who came in to teach us to be agile call the meetings scrums, and call themselves scrum masters. I want to smack them across the face so bad. It is a good thing I work from home. Every since they came in, my workload has actually increased because all of the freaking micromanagement and extra documentation I have to produce.

As for no chairs, that'd be hard with laptops.

I'm a CSM, but I've created my own hybrid approach that works for consulting and is attuned to the products my company offers. It's the opposite of what you're describing, document light and development heavy.

I manage the PM's and Solution Directors and micromanagement is a big no-no if you work for me. Most of my people are managing large teams and multiple projects and have no time to babysit.

We don't do Scrum calls unless we are down to a single critical path item. Right now I have our team doing it for a data load we are behind on so we can be up on progress and make sure there are no blocking issues sitting for days. Nobody's status should be more than 2 minutes and if it is I tell them to...

 
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For me, not only do I have to attend scrum calls every day, they happen mid-morning, which basically kills my morning.

That's horrendous. When we are in a crunch and need them I do them first thing in the morning. Right now it's 8-8:15 and we better be done by 8:10 or I start cutting people off. :hihi:
 

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