Weekly Team Meeting

This is a Weekly Meeting that is conducted by the engineering manager in the #dev channel. A typical meeting runs from 30-60 minutes.

Use this time to talk about any issues that affect you and your team from the past week. These include but are not limited to:

• Issues that have popped up multiple times.
• Topics that have continued to remain relevant or have yet to be solved.
• Items that have gained importance due to project priority shifts
• New projects on the horizon
• New SOP that need to be followed
• Communication patterns (positive or negative)
• Praise for completion / solution of engineer or team

Oftentimes a concern that an engineer has in their weekly check-in is something that should be addressed to the team as a whole. If one engineer is having an issue, it is quite possible that the other members of the team are as well.

This time could also be utilized by engineers who have an important topic that they would like to bring up with their fellow engineers. Of course, the type of discussion as well as length is up to you.

Engineers should be encouraged to discuss any questions or concerns they have in these meetings with the team. It promotes ownership and helps them improve their communication skills as they get used to presenting their ideas to the group.

When holding a team-meeting, topics are best outlined beforehand to allow for a more intentional and beneficial discussion.

One important aspect of conducting this meeting in a text-based environment is its permanence. Permanence is something that is often overlooked when discussing the pros and cons of text-based communication. Here the Team Meetings never disappear. The dev is free to go back in time and look at the notes given in these discussions. This makes problem solving, user accountability, and research much easier.

Example Weekly Team Meeting Template

Below is an example template that could be saved, with a new meeting template created every week. Notes are then added to the document throughout the week as pertinent topics make themselves known.

mm/dd/yy Weekly Team Meeting Template
Beginning: <link to beginning of the meeting, for posterity>
Recap: <link to meeting recap, for posterity>

Roll Call:

At the beginning meeting, everyone who is attending is asked to add an emoji reaction to a roll call message. Create a list of engineers who attended here.

- <list of engineers who attended>

Intro

@channel time for our weekly all hands! :fireworks:

Let’s do a roll call. Can you add a :wave: emoji reaction to this post?

I’m going to give an overview of what we’ll be talking about and then we’ll get started.

Overview

_*Overview for today’s meeting:*_

- Item 1
- Item 2

Meeting Notes

Post each item as bold text, followed by the meeting notes that you would like use in your Slack conversation.

*Item 1*

Let's talk about widgets, and how they can help us do X better.
Widgets are great.
But what is a widget?

*Item 2*

Even better than widgets, are wazzles...

_Are there any questions about any of these topics?_

Discussion

This is an opportunity for the team to discuss anything that came up during the meeting. It be planned ahead of time or freeform.

Is there anything else that anyone would like to discuss before our meeting ends?

Recap

While the meeting is taking place, copy the links from the various points of interest as they are happening. This will help you to generate the recap.

_*x/x/2020 Weekly All-Hands Meeting Recap*_
<link to slack message for beginning of meeting>

Item 1
<link to slack message for this item>

Item 2
<link to slack message for this item>