This is first in the series I intend to write about “management lessons from trenches”. I’ve worked in small and large software companies – building, shipping software, running in-the-cloud services and being responsible for large geographically distributed teams. These are the lessons I learned, some the easy way & some the hard way – paying in terms of missed deadlines, less-than-beautiful software, that dreaded call about your micro-service not working at 2 am (why is this call, real or proverbial, always at 2 am??) but hey! learning never ends…
So, here’s a typical scenario in most software development shops – you are setup with multiple teams in different geographies, across timezones & across cultures, most of the times there are cross-dependencies between teams across functions (dev, QA, SRE etc.) The upstairs people (bosses, yes, me included!) of course want things built with reliability of Trump-tweets that cause a storm on the left and (&&) the right & of course, all of it must be done yesterday! Your teams are always looking to make progress, get things done & more often than not, you end up doing meetings, many meetings – using a audio & screen-share conferencing tool so everyone can join, listen, participate & you all can move the ball forward – what could be noble-r than this? Indeed, it is good to collaborate, to make everyone on the team see the world same way – so all arrive to promised release/go-live date looking somewhat sane and still friends with each other.
This is where I’ve seen, time & again, things go off-the-rails, in the enthusiasm of meetings, rapid-progress – we completely the miss the point that people we pull-in to the meetings are remote as not-in-same-room, they can not hear all the side conversations going on the conf room, they can not see the facial expressions of people, they can not read the non-verbal cues – all they have to go by is the words they hear on phone or the images they see on the screen – if you are lucky a video conferencing call. You will find this a trivial point, an obvious observation – but the impacts of this are far-reaching – continue this habit or this way or running meetings without understanding the remote-ness, without paying conscious attention to it – you’ll start alienating the remote teams, they will lose interest, they will not understand the designs, they will come to regard those implementations as something forced-upon them rather than being their own – a toxic team environment is forming & soon spreads like a disease … so don’t be that jerk who runs meeting with remote attendees the same way as in-person, everyone in the room type meetings. Here are some simple rules (which are good to follow for any meetings, really) …
- Precise list of attendees: Make sure all the right players & ONLY the right players are invited to the meeting – if someone is not going to derive value from meeting or someone is not going to provide value to the meeting – spare them, trust me, they have productive things to do & will be thankful! Bosses tend to tag-along for many meetings – the rule is same for everyone, you either derive value from the meeting or you provide some – so ask boss which one is it? (ok, not all bosses may take this in right spirit, just because I do – but you can be crafty about this)
- It’s not 10 AM everywhere in the world: People work in different time-zones, they have outside-of-work commitments – so be mindful of time you are scheduling the meeting at – make sure it doesn’t overlap with family dinner time for your India or China or Eastern Europe teams. Just because you work at HQ (wherever it might be) – doesn’t mean all other remote locations need to adjust their schedule every time there’s a remote meeting, may be take turns – you join late night or early morning call at times & at times expect others to do so, this fosters trust & team-spirit, sends a message “we are all the same & in this together”.
- Publish an agenda: In the meeting invite, state the goals of the meeting, be explicit with words about what it is you are expecting to achieve by end of the meeting, it could be a decision the team needs to arrive at by considering alternatives, it could a design pattern being proposed, critiqued – but in the end voted up or down – something that is tangible & can be referred to after the meeting is over.
- Stick to the agenda: Its natural to get drifted in many different directions when people are sitting in same room, across tables & side conversations are a natural thing – but as dude (or dudette) leading the meeting, be firm & stop the side conversations.
- Require participation: For every item discussed require local as well as remote attendees participate in discussions, decisions. There’ll always be people (statistically speaking at least 1 person who wants to dominate the talking part of meetings!) – either on the phone or in the room – who simply love to talk, but as dude (or dudette) leading the meeting – intervene, politely tell people to let others speak up. Make sure everyone participates, this is NOT “encouraging” participation, its active, mandatory participation.
- Share the running notepad or meeting progress updates: As dude (or dudette) leading the meeting – either take live notes yourself or appoint a scribe to take notes & most important share those notes – real-time (Zoom, GoToMeeting – whichever tool you use), this gives a visual orientation for everyone involved, an orientation about what is being discussed and how is it relevant to the agenda.
- One speaker at a time: As dude (or dudette) leading the meeting, take charge, allow one person to talk at any given point and be respectful for time
- Followup with post-meeting notes: These could be in form of minutes-of-meeting, decisions-we-took, activities-we-agreed-to-do but be specific about who, what & when (& if needed how) if you have shared workspace, Wiki, shared-doc, even better.
- Beware of these phrases:
- “Let’s take this offline“: if this is said about one of the agenda items, intervene vehemently – the time to discuss the matter is here & it is now.
- “We are working xxx team on this“: These can be vapor-words either suggesting a meaningful collaboration is underway or nothing is being done, we are simply talking or wanting to to talk to team xxx – so insist for details, specific steps, concrete actions that be traced, viewed, reviewed.
- “I’m looking into zzzz“: What does it mean? what’s there to look into? Again, insist for concrete steps, actions, outcomes – this makes tracking, asking questions, followup, setting goals easy Vs nebulous “looking into it”.
- Be wary of recurring meetings: If you have good (remote) meeting practices in place, in all likelihood, you’d not need recurring meetings, if you do – please, please ask participants if they find these meeting productive & if not course-correct in time. Too often such recurring meetings become a boring time sink where people end up checking their emails or engage in other social media. Think of it this way – you are inviting “N” people, for say an hour-long meeting for “X” weeks & assuming the average cost spent per employee per hour is $100 (pick any number that makes sense to your situation) – is that meeting producing “100 times N times X” worth of value? (measure value whichever you chose, tangible, intangible …)
You must be thinking – “geez, this is too much“, well, it is, no one said building great software across continents and oceans is walk-in-the-park! But the good news is, with 3 to 4 such meetings it gets easy & everyone involved will follow along & understand the rules of the game and you will build an efficient, effective team.