The stand will only really work when the product is about to be released.

Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Sequoiacap” (ID: Sequoiacap) , author Hong Shan.

In the early morning of the working day, in 10-15 minutes, everyone gathered in a circle to answer questions like “what did you do yesterday”, “what do you plan to do today” and “what obstacles did you encounter?” This is a typical stand-up scenario experienced by many people.

Stand-Up Meeting has become popular among enterprise product development teams in recent years due to its flexible format and short time.

An effective stand will undoubtedly be a magic weapon to improve team communication and work efficiency. But in fact, it is not suitable for all scenarios. If you only perform stand-up meetings mechanically every day without focusing on key issues, the effect of the meeting may be greatly reduced, and many people feel that time is wasted.

Whether standing meetings are more than just standing meetings. What kind of situation does it apply to? How does a really good product team meeting work? Around the decision-making level, how to organize everyone to launch an “offensive” on key issues? This article will bring you useful references.

How to organize an excellent product team meeting

Most stations are held daily, and some teams have reduced the frequency to 2-3 times a week. The meeting is short, but it often happens that people talk at the meeting and talk about things that are not related to work, such as sharing what they did on the weekend. These behaviors cannot help you develop high-quality products quickly, but people are still very enthusiastic about standing meetings. Some commonly used tools even have a standing meeting function built in.

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In fact, the website will only really work when the product is about to be released. Just as your army is ready to attack: are we ready to run A / B tests? Is the marketing department ready to tweet and advertise? Is the customer service department ready to respond to customer questions after product launch?

-This is only effective if your army is ready to launch “Normandy Landing” and a station will be ready for product launch.

The station will not make time for decision-making

In theAt a typical station meeting, participants were asked to share the following:

  • What did I accomplish yesterday?

  • What am I going to do today?

  • What hinders me?

    There are several major issues with this form:

    First, most of the time, you don’t care what other people do every day, unless what another team member did yesterday is the basis of your work or hinders your work. What you share can’t easily be blocked if you don’t reduce your obstacles explicitly.

    For example, a product manager might share something like, “Yesterday, I conducted an interview, developed some regulations, and met a client. Today, I ’m interviewing another designer candidate, Update some user stories. I have n’t encountered any obstacles at the moment. ”This is a typical example of sharing the progress of their work in a meeting. Obviously, this does not help to quickly build high-quality products.

    Second, why does everyone care what you are doing today? Again, this sharing is only useful if what one person is doing today reduces the obstruction of another person on the team. But if it is really a big obstacle, should I wait until the daily stand to tell everyone? Why not email the person causing the obstruction or walk to their desk and tell them to remedy the problem in time.

    Finally, let ’s analyze the third point, which is to share what is blocking you now. For example, back-end engineering departments must wait for clearer front-end specifications before determining the engineering design documents they must implement. Still others are hindered because a decision has not yet been made. Rather than saying “I’m blocked by a problem”, say “Hey, why don’t we make a decision on a problem together so we can move on?”

    The station will not allow time for decision making. The station will be designed to make “obstacles” known, not to solve them. However, solving problems is more important than being aware of them.

    Meeting around decisions

    Only meeting around key decisions can further improve the efficiency of the meeting and speed up the development cycle. Here is a simple alternative that works for any product team and most meetings.

    In the meeting, answer the following two questions:

    1. Who needs to work on what key action items by what date?

    2. What decisions need to be made?

    Depending on the number of decisions to be made, 1-3 meetings are held each week. In the early stages of product development, the team needs to make many decisions and the frequency of meetings is high;As the development progresses, the number of decisions that need to be made will decrease, the time for building products will increase, and the frequency of meetings will decrease; similarly, the difficulty of making decisions will decrease as the development progresses.

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    With the different stages of the product development life cycle, the frequency of conferences is not the same.

    If teams can make critical decisions quickly and efficiently, they can reduce weeks or months of unnecessary delays in the product development cycle. How do you ensure this?

    • Collect open questions

      In the preparatory phase of the meeting, communicate with each functional leader (design, R & D, marketing, etc.) of the product team and ask them what decisions they need to make, such as: “Should we seek more resources from the top management”, “Who will be the leader of the group”, etc., collect open questions they put on the agenda. Record a series of action items to be proposed at the decision meeting to clarify the tasks of each team member next.

      As the moderator of the meeting, you should quickly go through the action items to ensure that everyone can continue to perform the key tasks assigned to them and ensure that they can be completed on time. Any new tasks that appear in the discussion are added to the list in real time. This can usually be done in less than 10 minutes.

      The rest of the meeting is used for decision making. In many cases, some relevant members of the team have already had an informal conversation (for example, designers and R & D personnel talk about a specific aspect of the design), and they can introduce an open question to the entire team Background and the answers they want to get. Decisions are usually made in seconds or minutes.

      In a few cases, a decision needs to be discussed more fully. In this case, ask the most capable person in the team and the 2-3 members who are most relevant to the decision. Set up a quick working group sometime to discuss the project and make constructive suggestions, and then share their suggestions with other members via email or at the next product team meeting.

      Use team meetings and group discussions to quickly troubleshoot unresolved issues.

      • Decision Log

        Another good way is to introduce a “decision log” as part of the meeting. A single document can be used to keep a complete record of all meeting agendas and previous decisions made. These records come in handy during post hoc evaluations after product release. It makes it easy for you to reflect on your project and find the root cause of problems.

        Summary

        Although the popular station conferences are flexible in form, there are still some limitations in driving teams to carry out effective product development. The root cause of the longer development cycle is the inability to make decisions quickly and frequently. By replacing daily meetings with fewer decision-making meetings, the product team can save a lot of time and must be able to build the product faster.

        Information

        The 5 most common mistakes startups make. How to avoid “stepping into the pit”?

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        • A pure producer perspective. This kind of prejudice is especially dangerous for startups. They fall in love with their products so much that they ignore the pain points of customers and make their products out of the actual needs of users.

        • Selling products, not solutions. Customers don’t want products, they want solutions. Most startups’ marketing messages will tend to revolve around “I, I, and more me,” but successful startups adjust their products and business models to enable customers to achieve their goals.

        • Ignore the process. Process is not an obstacle. They are the enablers for startups to fulfill their promises to customers (and investors).

        • Do not miss any new opportunities. Founders are a valuable resource for startups. Their energies are limited and they must focus on the important actions that yield the greatest results.

        • Refused to learn. Successful startups will be in timeLearn about the latest developments in their field and learn from customers.

          Make more connections with people who are better than you

          How does Buffett choose his partner?

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          • Those who live according to their own values. When life leaves an arc and the world becomes full of uncertainty, the value system of successful people remains unwavering. Because these values ​​define who they are and what their core business and mission are.

          • A person who insists on doing what they like. Choose to be with those who live for their mission, and their love will infect you and inspire you to discover your mission.

          • People who really understand listening. The most successful people often know how to ask others for advice and draw on their wisdom. Because they know it will make them better.

          • The upright person. It is important to choose people who are upright, because they can be trusted, do what they say, keep their promises, and set an example for others.