Holding Meetings
When working on an Agile or Scrum team, it is a general rule that meetings should be short, to the point and have clearly defined goals. When everyone is in the same office it is hard enough, but when the team is mostly online there are unique challenges for communication.
Here's how we hold meetings at Assembla:
- Team members fill out Scrum reports prior to meeting. Work done, to be done and roadblocks are reported by each team member in the Stand Up Report tool.
- We hold a daily stand-up meeting, every business day.
The time for the meeting is defined by GMT. Everyone figures out for themselves what time that is for them.
The meeting starts at 13:00 GMT on the dot.
We hold our meeting entirely in the Chat tool. No conference calls. The entire meeting is recorded in chat. If a team member could not attend the stand up meeting, they can log in later and read the chat.
We hold the meeting in the same space every day. Same time, same place.
If people need to clarify a point that cannot be made in the Chat session, they are asked to hold the item for later and address it offline. This is followed by phone, Skype or email.
Work items that are identified in the team meeting are immediately created as tickets and assigned.
If a team member does not have an immediate task, they alert the team lead in the Chat. The team lead assigns a ticket or resolves it offline.