Business Analyst OR Scrum Master - How to Have Productive Meetings

live and then all right let me make sure we're going we're live in the group all right we are so welcome everyone this is Sir Jeet um I'm the host in this Facebook group and the YouTube channel what we're going to cover today is how to have productive meetings right and effective meetings as business analysts from Masters often time I've heard so many of you guys ask me you know how do we lead meetings effectively all right so the typical role of a business analyst or scrum Master you're talking to stakeholders all day every day right most of the time you guys are even leading sessions so then how do you have productive meetings um you know uh to make sure that you're getting across and collecting the feedback and the requirements that you need to so any thoughts on how you guys do that today or how how are you guys doing that today are you guys leading meetings today I know some of you guys are uh yes just um before I could share my thoughts and that I have a question so are you talking about how we prepare before the meeting or like now this scenario has to do with weather in the meeting all of it so how do you have productive meetings right what what does that require does that require preparation um do you just show up and talk about whatever you want with your stakeholders how do you um have meetings that are going to be productive and worthwhile for you as a business analyst or a scrum Master along with your stakeholders so my Approach is this is what I pretty much use before scheduling the meeting itself obviously we need to understand the context uh what's going to be discussed in the meeting because uh if you're organizing a meeting you're trying to schedule a meeting and for example you want to get some requirements for some from some particular stakeholders you also need to prepare your mind for them to know what they are coming to give to you at that particular meeting so how do you do that uh based on the topic of discussions I might send them a preparatory notes all right so based on this meeting this is what we're going to be discussing and I expect you to come with the following informations and explain maybe this particular system to me so they actually know and they're coming with whatever material they need to come for that meeting uh um that's how I usually do to prepare before the meeting okay that's awesome that's exactly right right so before you invite anybody or before you even hold a meeting there's got to be some prep work ahead of time right you have to know because most of the time you know there may be project managers on the team there may be product owners on the team right depending on what work environment you're working on but most of the time as business analysts when we're Gathering requirements or we're in the elicitation phase or the requirements phase you guys are the ones that are leading those sessions so it becomes really critical that you plan out what the topic and what it is that you're going to be talking about right and it's equally important that you share that information with your stakeholders so that they're also prepared to talk about those items and give you the requirements and what often ends up happening is that because your stakeholders if you share the agenda and objectives of the meeting they may need to pull somebody else in right because sometimes when you're talk working with stakeholders they may not be knowledgeable about everything and they may need to pull in other team members who are more knowledgeable about those topics so that's another reason why you need to prepare in advance and have those um topics in aligned what I'm going to go through today you guys is a PowerPoint presentation that walks you through how to have effective meetings what do you need to do before you have that meeting what do you need to do during the meeting to make sure that it's successful and effective and productive and then also what are you going to do at the end right just because we talked to a bunch of people your stakeholders your product owner and have an understanding of what it is that we're doing do you just continue going forward and having meeting after meeting right so what is the proper way of having these meetings and documenting the discussion point so I'll talk about those in just a second so I'm going to go through the topics and then we'll leave q a towards the end uh share this is probably not the right way not the right way how do I present okay there we go all right so there is a method to the madness right there's a method to the madness on how we have productive meetings right there's preparation that's required to have productive meetings there are things that you need to actively participate and do to have productive meetings and then there are closing remarks and things that you need to do at the end of the meeting to make sure that everything that was discussed is documented and um is um you know agreed upon that's the other thing right so you may have stakeholders that sometimes are not able to attend so the things that I'm going to talk about are going to help you gain um you know knowledge and understanding on how to move forward and gain um agreement and make sure that everybody is on the same page going forward okay so there are four three things that I talked about there's prep which happens before duration which happens during the meeting and then the ending um of the meeting so what do you do to prepare for the meeting as comma talked about we definitely need a meeting agenda right um try to give you guys examples on what that looks like as well so an example would be we're going to review the ABC swim Lane diagram see attached right we're going to create an end-to-end schedule see attached right we're going to talk about Dev timelines we're going to talk about QA timelines we're going to talk about what are whatever timelines we need to to make this successful right so the goal of you know sending an agenda as I mentioned a little bit earlier is to make sure that people that are attending are prepared to talk about those items I'm going to put everybody on mute for now to reduce um disturbance so um as I said before when we do send out the agenda it's to not only make sure that you have a game plan but it's also to make sure that we have the right people in that meeting to talk about those items to make sure that that meeting will be successful right you see I have see attached you definitely want to send supporting documents if you want people to look at what you want to discuss at the meeting it's really good practice to send it um beforehand of the meeting so that they have time to review and you guys can then discuss those items at the meeting right you always want to talk about the meeting objective right um this is what I typically send out with the agenda an example would be the goal and objective of this meeting is to review the ABC swim Lane diagram and gather feedback right again making sure that you yourself are prepared to talk about these items along with your stakeholders right it should not be a surprise to your stakeholders where you show up and you want to talk about something that they may not have enough knowledge or background on supporting documentations as I mentioned earlier that if you want them to review something you need to send it in advance so that they have the time to review and provide feedback and then meeting agenda the agenda meeting objectives and supporting documents should be sent at least 24 hours in advance of the meeting the earlier that you can send it the better it is but the the rule um uh you know something that at least I go by is that you definitely want to send the agenda the objectives and the supporting documents at least 24 to 48 hours in advance of the meeting close opening remarks how do you start meetings um you know some of you guys who are you know pretty new into this role may be a little shy you know leaving meetings so then how do you start a meeting that's um productive so these are some examples that I've used in the past and I've given them to you so you can also start your meetings out strong right so it could be as simple as hello everyone thank you for attending this meeting today and then you start talking about your agenda items right or hi everyone first I'd like to welcome you all right and again a nice way to acknowledge everyone welcome them to the meeting and then start talking about your agenda items another example is hi everyone I really appreciate that you all um uh I really appreciate you all attending today we have lots to cover so let's get started I did share the agenda and supporting documents for this meeting so let's start with our first agenda items so again you're welcoming everyone you're thanking them for being there and then you're hitting it off strong talking about the agenda items and then the last one is like hey hi everyone I'm Sarah I'm a new ba pmsm whatever your role is on this project and I'll be working with you all to implement a successful project this one is if you're brand new to the team this is how you can introduce yourself and make sure that they know and recognize who you are along with your role on the project okay and then duration of the meeting what should you be doing right if you've had meetings in the past with the same group of people or for the same project I always like to do a recap right a recap doesn't mean that you're going to talk about what happened in previous meetings for 30 minutes you're gonna spend five minutes recapping on what items were discussed or what action items you guys may have still that are open right there's no point in talking about action items that are closed but I would definitely talk about any of open items action items from our previous meetings that are still open and then any major decisions that were made in our previous meetings again not to take more than five minutes to recap your meetings prior and then you're gonna discuss your agenda items at that meeting only right there will be often times where stakeholders bring up things that are not on the agenda your goal and objective as a business analyst and a scrum Master is to stay on track with agenda items because otherwise um you know you'll never get through your agenda items and it'll be not that things that stakeholders want to talk about is a waste but you definitely want to stay focused on what the goal for that meeting is only because you may have other stakeholders that are also impacted by those requirements right so in that scenario what do you do if your stakeholders bring up topics that are not of relevance or not on the agenda um for that meeting topic um here's an example of what I you know use or have used um I always say Hey you know Jane thank you for bringing this to our awareness I agree something that we need to discuss and perhaps it makes sense to have a dedicated time but this topic alone I'll add this to our parking list of items to discuss at a later time frame for now let's Circle back on the topic at hand so again you're being respectful of their concerns but you are moving ahead with your agenda items to make sure that you're not moving off track okay and then the last bullet point says done the same thing stay on topic to make sure you cover the objective of the meeting which is so critical you guys if you become the business analyst and the scrum master that lets your stakeholders just talk about whatever they want to talk about today um it's not it's not good for you and it's not good because you'll be delayed in gathering all the requirements that you need and being successful in your role okay closing remarks so what do you do at the end of the meeting you need to start um you know your closing remarks five minutes before the meeting time is over so if your meeting is 30 minutes you need to start five minutes earlier uh your meeting end time or if it's an hour at you know 55 minutes you need to start your closing remarks to make sure that you are able to have the last minute item and things to talk about before you close the meeting out so an example is um well I think we made great progress on our agenda items I'd like to recap decisions and action items and make sure I've captured everything right your decisions are going to be things that you and your stakeholders have decided on right so these could be things like oh um you know we want the dashboard to have these uh data points right those are decision points those are also your requirements but you want to capture some of these items to make sure that they go on your meeting minutes right you may have action items action or an example of an action item is like Jane I'll send you the ABC requirements for review and feedback what does your ETA look like to finalize those requirements action items are anything that you need from somebody else or somebody else needs to give to another team member right these are things that need to happen for us to be successful as a team so as a business analyst or scrum Master it is your job to document what those action items are and track them until they're completed right another example is Jim um you know share the project plan for you know XYZ project and understand the dependencies by close of business today right or you know as you as a business analyst or certain Master you need to send everyone meeting notes along with updated supporting documentation by closer business today so um that's you know another example of an action item and then you need to send out your meeting minutes within 24 hours of the meeting right um if you guys need templates of what meeting minutes look like I can add those um for you guys but it is really critical that you send out your meeting minutes after you're meeting 24 within 24 hours to make sure that you're documenting decision points or topics of discussion that we talked about as a team along with action items right things that our team members need to do to make sure that we move on to the next step and then we have agreement and we have decisions to keep moving forward on our project right and that's all I have what questions do you guys have you guys Blown Away you guys may be on mute I put all of you guys on mute um to make sure that uh to reduce some of the background noise hey hi Sarah G this is Ruchi here so whatever you covered today is pretty much what I do on a daily basis like whatever projects that I'm currently working on I do have like a i whenever I set up a meeting I need to understand what the project is all about gather some background information that what I'll be trying to achieve here so these are the questions that I do have in the meeting with the with the stakeholders that what is the purpose of the project what are the goals and the objectives what are the critical pieces and the components we are trying to solve with this project so all those kind of questions I have whenever I set up a meeting which is a requirement elicitation meeting I set up I attached the agenda in the in the meeting like what are we going to talk about in the meeting and once the meeting is conducted I do send them as you mentioned like a meeting notes what did we discuss in the meeting about what will be the next steps and once the project like kicks off I do have a bi-weekly meeting with my business the developers in the call as well and we we give them demos okay this is what we have achieved so far so this is the way I mean every bi-weekly or weekly we have meetings with the smart cells depending on how the calendar looks like so we do have meeting and we give them updates on what we have achieved so far and are we going to achieve the timeline that they are expecting any blockers we have I mean all those kind of updates we uh we just give them in the meeting that's great yeah that's awesome hi sarabji hello yeah I have a question for you so there are scenarios where I find it a little bit difficult maybe you can share how you do that scenario to answer everyone here so uh it's another way I'm in the meeting and I have three or four stakeholders and I am the one facilitating the meeting again it's difficult to facilitate and take meeting notes on that that particular meeting I don't know if you have been in that scenario where it's kind of difficult for you to pass it through the meeting and take uh notes so how do you do those scenarios so um how do you facilitate the meeting and take meeting notes um you guys are not required to you're not transcribers you don't need to you know say Jane said so so you know this and Jim said this right you guys are not transcribers you guys are business analysts and scrum master so you only need to capture you know overarching discussion points right you don't need to capture every little Nitty Gritty thing that happened in the meeting just focus on the major points that you guys talked about you know requirements for the system you know reports dashboards um you know just those big you know big requirements that you are talking about and not have to capture every little thing does that help kelma yeah it helps thank you are you are you trying to capture everything in the meeting no no not really capture everything uh because at times it might be difficult trying to capture those key points as you said while facilitating the meeting so uh I just wanted to like get how to do because my I either one or one of my boss too there are some meetings where she too she facilities I should take no so what she do is uh she delegates kind of like the notes taking to someone else where she's positive in the meeting so I just wanted to maybe like if you could have another scenario how you handle that you can have that but oftentimes we don't have the luxury of having somebody take our notes for us right um what I generally do is I share my screen where I'm taking notes and I take like bullet points of the major items and then I can go back and think about the discussion and you know write it down another option if your stakeholders are okay with it is for you to record the meeting right but you have to make sure that your stakeholders know that you're recording the meeting right um so that's another option but in my past experience I generally share my screen where I'm taking notes and you know I'll put a um the topic that we're talking about and I'll put two or three bullet points on you know big big arching things and then I can go back and recap later but if you have team members that can take notes for you that's awesome oftentimes we just don't have that luxury okay thank you yeah absolutely any other questions a question in the comments or in the chat was can we share the agenda on the screen while we're doing you're having the meeting and that's absolutely okay to make sure that you're on track to cover the agenda items and your stakeholders know what the agenda items are that's absolutely okay and what I actually do is when I share the screen with the agenda items I make my bullets right under those agenda items to make sure that I have a recollection right just high level not not everything but just you know bullet points right under the agenda items and then I use that um to send out as part of my meeting minutes so I can recap on the agenda and items that are discussed um would you says I record the meetings as arjit mentioned with the consent of others yeah you guys are more than welcome to do that but make sure that your stakeholders are aware that you're recording the meeting and oftentimes your stakeholders are okay because they want to make sure that you're you know understanding and capturing um the requirements as needed so it's absolutely okay to ask um if the meeting can be recorded all right any other questions all right I hope you guys found this helpful um again send uh post a post comments on any other agenda items you guys not not agenda items any other training topics you guys like me to talk about either in the Facebook group or on the YouTube channel I do review all comments um and I will respond and do the dedicated training on a particular topic as it's needed and with that I will talk to you guys later thank you so much you guys for attending in person um I always enjoy interaction and that's why I do these live sessions thank you everyone please absolutely yeah I want to know if not in the meeting you don't understand what they are saying can I repeat myself I like tell them to repeat themselves several times um several times um probably not um so generally if I don't understand I'm like hey you know just help me understand you know what this means um so if at the second time I'm still not getting it what I generally do is say hey you know Jane can we connect on this offline because I'm still having a hard time right it's better not to keep talking about the same thing when you have other people because you don't you know you want to move on to the agenda items but if I'm struggling to understand a topic I will at the meeting say hey would it be okay if I reached out to you offline um so I can have a better understanding of this so that's what I would do okay yeah thank you yeah absolutely hi Sarah hi how are you I'm fine thank you how are you I'm good um I have a question my question is when I'm having a session with stakeholders um getting requirements from them sometimes I just feel there's too much silence when I'm trying to take notes and it's just me um and that worries me when I feel that I'm taking my time to document or take the bullet points that they are mentioning um sharing your screen so at least they're looking at something when you're taking your notes okay yes so sometimes they are but I always have this feeling that maybe they're impatient but they're not showing it um I definitely wouldn't try to um I think that was common question to uh having a hard time documenting so you guys um have to get into the the habit of taking shorthand notes yeah right um and and you don't need to like maybe send me what your meeting minutes look like during the meeting because what uh you guys you know again at the meeting just capture the general consensus and then go back and document full-fledged requirements or full-fledged meeting notes because um you don't want to use their valuable time to make sure that you're documenting like every little thing because again their time your stakeholders time is extremely valuable your project managers product owners not to say that your time isn't valuable but they actually have their full-time job is not really to help you document requirements of course I understand things that we work on will help them become more efficient and effective I totally get it um but they actually have a full-time job that's not giving you requirements right so they have other things to do so we definitely need to um you know keep keep it moving um thank you yeah yeah so is it bad to go to go over time it's not recommended at all your stakeholders will know that you always go over time and um could stop attending ah okay yeah no you you guys have you're in a professional environment um you need to be seen as a professional keep your meeting minutes you know at the time that you've allotted if you have follow-up questions that's what your action items are for if you have follow-up questions go reach out to them one-on-one instead of you know having 10 people in the meeting and you keep talking about the same stuff over and over again right and you guys um Ruchi said this earlier and I wanted to Ruchi this is for you too oftentimes I spend a lot of time with my stakeholders before even getting to meetings where there's many stakeholders involved to have the background information on the project and to talk about you know what you know to have you know you don't want to go into the meeting code on the project like your first meeting with your stakeholders should not be hey what are we doing on this project right um so you definitely want to make sure that you're doing your homework your prep work talking to the stakeholders um before the first meetings or set of meetings with them to make sure that you have enough understanding of the project and then can move on from those discussions foreign all right anything else you guys awesome this was a great session thank you so much for being interactive thank you for the questions um again please post any questions comments um any other meeting topics or training topics in the Facebook group or the YouTube channel if you haven't subscribed to my YouTube Channel please do so it's the easiest way to find past training um I've tried it I've tried my best on the Facebook group to kind of organize the meetings but Facebook just is the way that Facebook works so in on the YouTube channel it makes it a lot easier to find um everything um and it's pretty organized um so yes um subscribe to the channel again I am more than happy to do training sessions give me topics and I'm more than happy to talk about them all right but that I'll talk to you guys later bye everyone thank you bye bye bye thank you bye

2022-10-23 06:47

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