I’m just curious about what regular product-only meetings you guys have with other PMs and product leaders that aren’t agile or scrum?
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In addition to agile and scrum meetings, there are often monthly sync meetings where PMs and product leaders come together to discuss overarching product strategies, market trends, and long-term roadmaps. These meetings provide an opportunity for cross-functional collaboration and alignment on high-level priorities. Additionally, some teams may also have regular planning sessions to review and prioritize feature requests, bug fixes, and other product enhancements based on customer feedback and business goals.
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It depends entirely on the goal you’re trying to accomplish. Cross-skilling? upgrading your knowledge? sharing domain expertise?
Meetings are often recurrent gatherings where no action is taken. To accomplish the desired results, I like to schedule frequent working periods.
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Each of these goals requires a different approach and set of actions. For cross-skilling, you may need to identify the relevant skills you want to acquire and find opportunities to learn and practice them. If upgrading your knowledge is the objective, staying updated with industry trends and seeking out educational resources can be beneficial. Lastly, sharing domain expertise might involve actively participating in professional networks, attending conferences, or mentoring others in your field.
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Quite agree to this. During these working periods, everyone can actively contribute and make progress towards the goal. This approach ensures that valuable time is utilized effectively and avoids the common pitfalls of unproductive meetings.
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Recurring product meetings can vary widely depending on the organization’s culture, size, and specific product management processes. These meetings are typically designed to foster collaboration, alignment, and communication among product managers (PMs) and product leaders. Here are some common recurring product meetings that might take place, excluding Agile/Scrum ceremonies:
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Weekly Product Sync Meetings: These are short, regular meetings held once a week where PMs and product leaders discuss the progress of ongoing projects, share updates, and highlight any challenges or blockers. It’s a great way to ensure everyone is on the same page.
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Bi-Weekly or Monthly Roadmap Review: In these meetings, product managers and leaders review the product roadmap, make adjustments based on changing priorities or market conditions, and ensure that the product strategy aligns with the company’s goals.
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Quarterly or Annual Strategy Sessions: These meetings are focused on long-term planning and strategy development. PMs and product leaders discuss high-level goals, market trends, and the overall product vision. They may also set objectives and key results (OKRs) for the upcoming quarters or year.
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Feature Prioritization Workshops: When it’s time to prioritize features or enhancements, PMs and product leaders may hold workshops to collectively assess and rank potential initiatives based on criteria like customer impact, business value, and technical feasibility.
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Customer Feedback Sessions: These meetings revolve around customer feedback and insights. PMs share feedback collected from users, customer support, or surveys, and discuss how to address customer needs and pain points.
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Competitive Analysis Meetings: Product teams may periodically review competitive landscapes and market trends to stay informed about what other companies are doing and identify potential opportunities or threats.
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Cross-Functional Collaboration Sessions: While not exclusively for product managers, these meetings bring together members of different teams, such as engineering, design, marketing, and sales, to ensure that everyone is aligned on product goals and strategies.
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Post-Launch Reviews: After a product or feature launch, PMs and product leaders may meet to evaluate its performance, review metrics, and gather lessons learned for future improvements.
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Budget and Resource Allocation Meetings: These meetings focus on resource allocation, including budget planning, staffing, and resource allocation for upcoming projects.
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Innovation Brainstorms: These are creative sessions where PMs and product leaders brainstorm and ideate on innovative product concepts and future directions.
The exact frequency and format of these meetings can vary from one organization to another. Some companies may opt for more frequent touchpoints, while others may prefer a less formal approach. The key is to ensure that there is a structured way for product managers and leaders to collaborate, communicate, and align on product strategy and priorities.
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I enjoy one-on-one conversations. a regular gathering to discuss anything. Undoubtedly beneficial when working remotely and with people from all around the world. have seen an increase in trust and team morale since implementing them. For the size of my staff, this meeting theme represents arguably my highest weekly time investment.
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At the conclusion of sprints, I enjoy a great retro-regular meeting to recognize what is and is not working. During the retro-regular meeting, we analyze our progress and discuss any challenges faced during the sprints. This allows us to make the necessary adjustments and improvements for future iterations.
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Scrum of Scrums weekly PI Planning quarterly (or X number of sprints) is a collaborative meeting where representatives from multiple Scrum teams come together to align their plans and dependencies. This allows for better coordination and synchronization of work across the organization. The purpose of this meeting is to ensure that all teams are on the same page and can collectively plan and prioritize their work for the upcoming period.
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In general, a good way to keep people feeling informed is to communicate with stakeholders and management on a monthly or quarterly basis. This allows for regular updates and ensures that everyone is kept in the loop about important developments. Additionally, it provides an opportunity to address any concerns or questions that stakeholders and management may have, fostering a sense of transparency and collaboration within the organization.
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Anything else with only product people in terms of strategy, marketing, and development?
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Yes @RisaButler. Quarterly is generally enough to keep the various roadmaps synced with other products. This is critical if you are developing a feature that needs integration with another product. Not only for the other product, but so all other product leads are aware of the integration.
Typically, a VP who manages a team of PMs will have a weekly or biweekly staff meeting. That is a good place to identify topics you want to have a separate meeting about.
There are types of meetings: with other PMs, sharing plans and ideas
- Your team is outperformed by sales, development, or management These folks are interested in the product roadmap, but I don’t often go in-depth with them about the reasons why the features are prioritized the way they are. Talk about the plan and accept requests (typically from sales). The order of your plan, though, should have a purpose, so it won’t vary at random.
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I appreciate feedback. In order to establish solid habits and structure for our brand-new product team, I wanted to see if there was anything I might be overlooking or meetings that perhaps aren’t as necessary.
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Every other week, there are cross-team touchpoints for product. The same is true for architects and technical leads, with all technical people getting together every four to six weeks.
That only applies to my region; there are monthly guild meetings for the entire organization (in line with the ‘not at all true reality’ but well-liked Spotify model when we originally established product teams five years ago).
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Interesting @JaneWinfred. What happens at the monthly guild meetings?
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Coordination meetings with coaching and peer review, feedback, and support are the touchpoints. Meetings of the guild are practice-oriented (better discovery, better conversion of data into insights, ideas, and backlog, stakeholder management, etc.). These meetings provide opportunities for team members to share their progress, discuss challenges, and receive guidance from experienced peers. Additionally, the guild meetings serve as a platform for knowledge sharing and foster a collaborative environment where innovative ideas can be generated and refined.
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I appreciate the information. I believe that by implementing this, we can leverage the benefits it offers and enhance our team’s performance. Additionally, I suggest discussing this proposal with the team to gather their insights and ensure a smooth transition during the implementation process.
Thank you once again.
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