Meetings Today
I’m writing this at work since I’m going right from here to do phone calling for the most liberal candidate for governor. It’s frightening to think of several hours on the phone but I’ll survive.
Over lunch time I had an hour-long meeting to discuss the job responsibilities of the project managers in my group that do different stuff than I do. We’re all PMs though, so all of us had to be in the discussion which was slow and painful. We had to translate each activity that a PM might do into separate Planning, Execution and Communication goals. OMG it was painful and we barely got started, so now we’re going to meet every Tuesday at lunch time until we’re done.
While it’s annoying to write those responsibilities, that document will form the basis for the PM’s reviews so they are being given the opportunity to create goals that really match their work. My job document was written before I got there.
The second thing that happened was straight two hours of meetings on my newest project. First there was a “core” meeting with more than a dozen people, then I ran a Quality meeting. By the time the group got to my meeting, they’re all burnt out (most also had lunchtime meetings) and antsy. This is the late stages of the project with major milestones coming in February and everyone has lots to do. Unfortunately no one paid any attention to testing earlier in the project so I’m backtracking a little and trying to get things organized which seems like a waste of time to a few people in the group. AHHHHHHHHHH. They’re testing like crazy but they don’t even know if they’re testing all the requirements.
Today, I figured I would try to be more visual in my approach to my meeting so I created a calendar with some key dates and we filled in the rest of the dates. About three quarters of the way I had to start doing a lot of “hey, let’s talk about that next week, but right now could we just figure out when we’re…” Overall it was good, we accomplished a lot and had some laughs and I didn’t show too much ignorance of the product or their process. What more can you ask for?
Over lunch time I had an hour-long meeting to discuss the job responsibilities of the project managers in my group that do different stuff than I do. We’re all PMs though, so all of us had to be in the discussion which was slow and painful. We had to translate each activity that a PM might do into separate Planning, Execution and Communication goals. OMG it was painful and we barely got started, so now we’re going to meet every Tuesday at lunch time until we’re done.
While it’s annoying to write those responsibilities, that document will form the basis for the PM’s reviews so they are being given the opportunity to create goals that really match their work. My job document was written before I got there.
The second thing that happened was straight two hours of meetings on my newest project. First there was a “core” meeting with more than a dozen people, then I ran a Quality meeting. By the time the group got to my meeting, they’re all burnt out (most also had lunchtime meetings) and antsy. This is the late stages of the project with major milestones coming in February and everyone has lots to do. Unfortunately no one paid any attention to testing earlier in the project so I’m backtracking a little and trying to get things organized which seems like a waste of time to a few people in the group. AHHHHHHHHHH. They’re testing like crazy but they don’t even know if they’re testing all the requirements.
Today, I figured I would try to be more visual in my approach to my meeting so I created a calendar with some key dates and we filled in the rest of the dates. About three quarters of the way I had to start doing a lot of “hey, let’s talk about that next week, but right now could we just figure out when we’re…” Overall it was good, we accomplished a lot and had some laughs and I didn’t show too much ignorance of the product or their process. What more can you ask for?
posted by changingagain at 5:08 PM
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