Because the meetings were so long, someone on the team suggested we institute “stand up meetings.” Instead of sitting at a traditional conference table, we took the chairs out of the room and ran meetings while standing on our feet. Well, the length of the meetings DRASTICALLY dropped, because people didn’t want to stand for long. Meetings went from 30-60 minutes to roughly 1/2 of that while still delivering meaty content. Neat, huh?
Does this sounds familiar to you?
Meetings are generally to gain new business, expand existing business or clarify existing business situations. Meetings play an important role in business communication. However, long meetings is sometimes a drag. A study conducted by the University of Minnesota found that the amount and length of meetings correlate with “negative effects” (burnout, anxiety, and depression) on its participants.
Why long meeting is unnecessary
They mess up your working time by breaking up your 8 hours working day into smaller pieces and this lead to losing focus on work getting done.
They are all about words and not the real things, unlike a coding script or screen design, therefore you will often encountered this: WYWINWYG (What You Want Is Not What You Get)
They usually contain an low amount of information conveyed per minute
They often contain at least one participant who will gets his/her turn and waste everyone’s time with long winded story telling skill.
One should format their question in this structure:-
- What did I accomplish yesterday?
- What will I do today?
- What obstacles are impeding my progress?
They drift off subject when others have no idea what is being convey
They need more time for preparation that other people usually doesn’t require
How to shorten meeting hours
A Stand Up meeting is a daily team meeting held to provide daily status updates to the team members. This type of meeting is usually timeboxed to 5 – 15 mins and participants will need to stand up to remind them to keep the meeting short and to the point. Most people refer this meeting as morning rollcall or daily scrum.
One of the crucial features is that the meeting is intended to be a status update to other team members and not a status update to the management or other stakeholders. Team members take turns speaking, sometimes passing along a token to indicate the current person allowed to speak. Each member talks about his progress since the last stand-up, the anticipated work until the next stand-up and any impediments they foresee.
Team members may sometimes ask for short clarifications but the stand-up does not usually consist of full fledged discussions.
Punishment for Late for Scrum Meeting
A great article on Stand up Meeting by Martin Fowler
It’s Not Just Standing Up: Patterns of Daily Stand-up Meetings