Stupid Meeting Tricks

I had this Inception process I was going through a few months ago. We were told we had a big project we needed to break into little pieces. Why? Don't ask.

So we're chugging along, breaking up problem A into problems B, C, and D, all of which can be worked pretty much in parallel.

During this process, I'm teaching Agile/Iterative techniques -- the team works together, we identify and solve our problems, we work in small iterations, etc.

After several meetings, our work was mostly completed. There was one problem left on the table.

Talking to the sponsor, I said my opinion was to give the team whatever time they needed to solve the last problem. As long as they felt it was important, let them run with it.

This is my default position. I assume that structured groups are usually smarter than I am (or than the sponsor is, for that matter). But I re-assured the sponsor that we could also "punt" -- we could take what we have and answer the other questions later. Not optimal, but at this early stage a lot of what you do is just drawing imaginary castles in the sky anyway, so it could work out.

What I hadn't anticipated was a impassioned plea from one of the team members. Turns out there are all of these constraints on the project, there are all of these other systems, and there are all of these pre-existing situations -- none of which was brought up in the meetings.

E-gads man! Speak up! We can't have an agile team that is self-directed if some of us are having and holding critical information offline from the rest of the group. I mean, I know it's cool to know stuff and to have these side conversations with the big kahuna over email. Maybe you guys are all big buddies. Hey -- fine with me.

I'm also hip on not spilling your guts about everything you know. Perhaps Joe and Susie are having an affair and it is impacting their discussion about something in the group. That's not the stuff you make public -- comes under the "probably not my business" and the "more trouble than it is worth" categories. But it is something that you can try to manage offline.

Offline conversations are great. They have their place. But when you're talking about stuff that the group obviously needs to know and act on, stuff that the group can digest and make sense of, you have a responsibility to speak up. Speak up!

In this case, and in most cases, it was an honest mistake. If anything, I take responsibility for not being clear enough in my training how important communication and information is.

But it still bugs me. Folks, if you're in an agile team -- please try to over-communicate. Tell people what you know, what's on your mind, and what's bugging you. Every time you send an email privately to one or two members of the group, double-check. Is it for a good reason? Many times the answer can be yes, especially dealing with rumor, hard-to-communicate things you're worrying about, or personal issues that could become team risks. But many times it's stuff that needs to be shared. If it is, share it!