“Jack be nimble, Jack be quick…” the famous children’s rhyme explains the agile approach to management perfectly. Over the past 30 years, agile innovation methods have revolutionized the way in which a business democracy functions and has greatly increased the success rates of projects and systems. The idea is to be fast and easy—the very definition of agile.
When it comes to agile project management and structuring a successful business, employee morale and productivity means everything. To keep processes streamlined your people need to be on board and excited about operations. The first step to reaching a state of efficient output is to ensure meetings are held quickly and effectively.
Keeping it Quick
Although it may seem counterproductive, sometimes breaking a large meeting into two or three shorter ones can increase productivity. The shorter the meeting, the more focused people need to be to accomplish tasks. Setting small, 15-minute meetings at set times throughout the day will cut down on chitchat and diversions and enable multiple checkpoints for productivity.
A simple way to ensure a meeting runs quickly is to set a firm start and end time. One trick to keeping people on track is to calculate every minute it costs of downtime for the meeting running late and writing the figure on the board. This type of visual can help remind people the importance of being punctual when aligning productive tasks and schedules.
Communicate Goals
People need to know why they are in a meeting and agile project management cannot work without an open and continuous communication of goals. Do not assume action points from the previous meeting have been met. It is smart to only hold meetings with enough team members for there to be time to address everyone individually.
One tactic of agile gatherings is called a “stand-up meeting.” Unlike a status meeting that is typically held once a week, the key objective for a stand-up meeting is to ensure that the activities of each team member are aligned with the universal project goals. These short meetings are intended for each team member to assess their allocation of time and adjust their actions accordingly.
Allow Master Teams
It is a wise agile approach to not only keep your teams informed of daily operations, but to allow them to gel permanently. Part-time project assignments or rotating team members decrease productivity and team morale. Empirical data has shown that stable teams are 60% more productive and 60% more responsive than groups that have a revolving door of members.
Additionally, having master teams creates experienced practitioners to customize agile practices within their group and track metrics more closely. These carefully collected numbers can then be quickly presented in short meetings to reach goals more effectively.
The benefits of using the agile approach in meetings means quicker team gatherings, more frequently, with continuous adjustments to meet project goals. Attention spans can be short, so why not take advantage of that with fast and focused meetings? Agility is about the ability to move fast and effectively. Allowing team members to self-manage and track, while using meeting space to focus on accomplishing goals, leads to a higher degree of success every time
