4 Essential Meetings for Product Managers
Sometimes we feel like we’d rather disappear somewhere for a few months than spend a single minute in meetings. Monday morning meetings, planning, team gathering, brainstorming, stand-ups…
However, all the meetings are a necessary part of getting things done in product management. That’s why PMs should invest some time and efforts in conducting meetings effectively.
Departmentofproduct.com describes 4 meetings that product managers deal with on a day to day basis:
- Stakeholder requirements gathering
- Planning
- Retrospectives
- Product demos
Stakeholder Requirements Gathering
Users are paramount. However, in large corporates product teams are responsible not only for delivering an exceptional experience to external users, but also to support the needs of internal ones.
Your users may also sit in the same building. It’s a common task for internal-facing product folks to host requirements gathering sessions with stakeholders to uncover product requirements.
The objectives of this kind of meeting are:
- Identification problems. What problems do stakeholders have today?
- Why is this problem important?
- What should be done?
Planning meeting
If you’re working in 2 weekly sprints, it’s likely that you’ll need to arrange planning sessions with your team.
Planning can be a tricky meeting if you’re a PM who has just joined a new team.
Key objectives of planning:
- Goals setting. Set the goals for the upcoming development period to make the team understand what it is you’re aiming to achieve.
- Keep your development teams focused and aligned.
- Big picture. Use planning sessions to express how the work on the short term is helping to achieve your strategy.
- Clarify ambiguity. Try to eliminate ambiguity before planning so that everyone is clear about what you’re looking to build.
Retrospectives
The retrospective meeting is a like a group therapy with benefits. The benefits mostly being that as the result of the problems surfaced during your retros you will improve over time.
The objectives of the meeting are:
- Identification problems. What problems does your team have?
- Problem solution. The ideation and some creative ways for the possible solution.
- Performance measurement. How will you measure whether your solutions are working?
Product Demos
A product demo is an essential part of building a sense of shared purpose. It is a great opportunity to show off all of the things your team has been building over the past few weeks.
The objectives are:
- The main goal is to engage your audience and to make them genuinely interested in what you’re demoing.
- This is your chance to demonstrate for stakeholders exactly what you’ve been up to and the direct impact you’re having on the business.
- Morale boost. The process of working on a demo with your team will give you a real boost of morale.