Agile Notes (No. 49)

Using Meeting Purpose to Stay on Track

Happy Friday! Thanks for reading. We continue with Collaboration Explained by Jean Tabaka. This week, we are moving on to Chapter 9: The Organizing Tools.

We get two page grabs this week because I am not skilled enough to combine two pictures into one. :)

These questions are gentle ways to check in with the team to make sure they are still meeting the explicit, stated/written Meeting Purpose. Tabaka refers to “rat-holes” aka those tangents that meetings often take. [I’ve always called them rabbit-holes but to each their own.] Tabaka notes that he uses these questions to make sure teams are being deliberate in their meetings. They have to explicitly agree AS A TEAM to go down an off-topic rabbit/rat-hole.

If this were a Sprint. The rabbit-hole could bust the Sprint if the team decided. Going off a stated Meeting Purpose would effectively “bust” the meeting. It would require a re-set of the Meeting Purpose. Formal. Deliberate. Not just because the person that ALWAYS derails meetings is allowed to attend AND derail the meeting. You all have that person.

[The more I think about the term “rat-hole” I realize that rabbit-hole is just a bit nicer. A bit kinder. A bit gentler. Also, I once saw a rat outside of Fenway Park in Boston. It was the size of a small dog. And yes, I was (unfortunately) close enough to clearly see it was NOT a dog.]

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