This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Meeting Roles
Meeting roles are not permanently assigned like project roles; they are assumed for the duration of a meeting to help meet its goals. The project manager usually sets the agenda and the guest list, sends the meeting invitations and follow-up, and tracks attendees who were assigned action items. However, the project manager is not supposed to facilitate or record every meeting. If at least one other person can be support staff, the project manager can pay full attention to the actual meeting activities. The people assigned to fill meeting roles can be external to the team or even to the organization. Specialized meetings, like focus groups and joint application development (JAD) sessions, may require a trained facilitator hired from outside the company.
Scribe
Smaller meetings and well-established Agile meetings, like scrum meetings, can rely on their participants to take notes and update their own project dashboards. A scribe captures the results of more formal meetings in writing, creating documents to be archived with project communications and/or distributed to the team. The scribe does not have to be a member of the team, or even have product knowledge. When used, a scribe records action items, follow-ups, meeting minutes, annotations to the meeting agenda, brainstorming session results, and the results of official meetings that should be entered into project records.
Facilitator
A facilitator maintains the vision for the meeting and is responsible for it meeting its goals. This person controls everyone’s participation, guiding the group and keeping activities in line with the agenda. If communication gets noisy or stagnant, the facilitator solicits contributions and encourages attendees to consider all points of view. In smaller meetings, this person documents the meeting results and future action items, but more involved meetings will use a scribe so that the facilitator is free to focus on meeting management.
While this is not a definitive list, here are some techniques of successful facilitation:
Choose a supportive locale with adequate facilities.
Prepare an agenda and define concrete, realistic goals, matching activities to the meeting’s goals.
Schedule food and regular rest breaks.
Model active listening and objectivity.
Tone down aggressive communication and head off conflict.
Redirect teams to focus on key topics or tasks, not digressions.
Allow the team’s work to guide the outcome rather than directing their work.
Attendees/Target Audience
Attendees or target audiences are the team members and stakeholders attending the meeting. The terms audience, participant, attendee, and target audience are interchangeable in this context. Attendees should never be selected through a “may as well add them to the invite list” approach; it is important to weigh the time commitment of a meeting against the attendee’s schedule. Attendees who should attend a meeting, but cannot due to schedule constraints, should review the meeting minutes. In practice, the attendee’s role and responsibilities in the meeting will depend entirely on the type of meeting.