When it comes to remote work teams, meetings are an essential activity for getting aligned on expectations and working efficiently together. They are also a great tool to connect with your colleagues. However, to avoid wasting time, it’s important to make meeting more effective.

As one of the project managers at WebDevStudios, I have some useful tips.

5 Tips to Make Your Meetings More Effective

1. Reassess the purpose.

Ask yourself, “What is the purpose of this meeting?” Routine meetings are often scheduled at a point in the project when they are necessary.

While these meetings were effective at one point in time, it’s important to reassess these calls to determine if they are still relevant. If you find yourself saying, “This could have been an email,” after a recurring call, it’s likely time to cancel it.

2. Include the right people in your meetings.

Ask yourself, “Who needs to be on this call?” Depending on the purpose of your call, make sure you know who from your team actually needs to be included.

Will you need a specific team member’s input or expertise on an issue? Or, do you need to brainstorm a blocker with the full team?

Do you need some additional support on a client call, and who is best to provide that? To ensure you aren’t wasting your team’s time or resources, make sure to only include those who need to be in attendance.

3. Prepare an agenda.

To really make your meetings more effective, set clear expectations for the call up front using an agenda. It should be a brief outline of what needs to be discussed.

Feel free to send the meeting agenda out to all participants prior to the call to set the meeting up for success. For example, if the point of your call is to discuss a specific feature or request, use your agenda to outline the key points that need to be clarified or addressed.

4. Control the meeting, but not the conversation.

If the people in your meeting are the essential parties needed to participate in the discussion, they will all have an important role to play for your call. While you are in charge of leading the meeting, make sure that you are facilitating in a way that everyone is able to chime in.

Call facilitators should start a meeting by defining the agenda and setting the tone for what should be accomplished. After that, it’s time to back off and let the discussion begin.

Toward the end of the call, it’s time for the facilitator to jump back in to guide the call conclusion and define next steps. This leads me to my next point.

5. End on time and define the action items.

If you are facilitating a call, you should always aim to end on time. Hopefully, you have guided your team to stay on track throughout the call to support this.

However, in the event that you need to end a meeting, it is okay to let all participants know that it is time to wrap up. An easy way to communicate this is simply by stating, “I have a hard stop at [X] time.”

If you find yourself needing to end a call due to time limitations, wrap it up with a summary of the action items that need to be completed following the meeting. Identify who is responsible for completing them. Once next steps have been communicated and agreed upon, everyone should be aligned on what is happening next.

Conclusion

Ultimately, you’ll need to customize your approach to making meetings more effective in a way that fits your company. However, if you are overwhelmed with meetings, I hope these tips help.

The post 5 Tips to Make Your Meetings More Effective appeared first on WebDevStudios.

Searching through my dresser drawers, I found my dress pants nicely folded under about three pairs of yoga pants. I tried them on quickly just to be sure they still fit. It had been about six months since the last time I had to wear them. To my relief, they did. I also grabbed three dress shirts out of my closet to ensure I had my professional attire for the few upcoming meetings with the client. It was a top-tier client. I had to look my best. I was all packed, and ready to head to the airport.

Upon arrival, I was relieved to see my flight was on time. Getting through security was quick, even with my carry-on; so, I walked to grab my coffee, snacks and magazines for the four hour flight ahead of me. As I boarded the plane, to my surprise, I was the only passenger in row 15. I stretched out, set up my computer, and we were finally on our way!

Four hours went by fairly quick after one movie and some light magazine reading. As we landed in Seattle, I was so excited to meet up with a few fellow remote workers. Although I had met these guys only a few times prior in person, we work together day in and day out, so we always give big awkward hugs when we see each other. We quickly grabbed a rental car and were on our way to Redmond.

It was Day One of the onsite client meetings, and I doubled checked that I had everything I needed: computer, computer charger, Day One meeting agenda with questions, goals and an estimated timeline, my driver’s license (for check-in at the client’s offices), pen and paper, and my most professional-looking attire – dress pants, dress shirt, and a spiffy new scarf. Oh, and I made sure that one of us knew the address, building number and meeting room ahead of time. We were on our way.

At the client check-in, we all quickly gave our driver’s licenses to the receptionist. Most clients require some form of identification to get into a secure building. She created a name tag for each of us to ensure that we were approved to be in the building and we headed to the meeting room. The client offered free refreshments that were located just outside of our meeting room. That was an awesome perk! We had our coffee filled, computers open and meeting agendas out.

When the client arrived, we were excited to shake hands in person and interact face-to-face. We all introduced ourselves and sat down to start the four hour scheduled meeting. We followed through the agenda, but really started to dive into the details of how each process and feature would work. Everyone in the room had input and asked questions. We were able to dive into technical details and outline a solid plan for the upcoming development work. We even took over the dry erase board and started doing live wireframes with the client.

Although we could have discussed this scope over various conference calls and emails, the energy and productivity of sitting in that meeting room for a few hours over two days to iron out all of the details with the client in person was truly effective. We have two solid project plans for upcoming development work and it only took three days of travel, two days of onsite client meetings, a meeting agenda, live wireframing and four talented WDS-ers to get it done!

Meeting with the client face-to-face can be extremely effective, especially when mapping out a new scope of work or project plan for a complex development project. It is also a great way to build your relationship with a long-term client. A few key considerations when planning your next onsite client meeting:

• Be open to travel
• Dress in business professional attire
• Have a plan for the meetings and goals to accomplish while onsite

You want to ensure that the time is productive and that you and your client both come out of it feeling accomplished. I personally cannot wait for my next onsite client visit!

The post Being Productive at Onsite Client Meetings appeared first on WebDevStudios.