5 Essential Meetings that Product Managers need to have regularly — (2) Team Sync-up

A Product Manager works by Collaborating, Information Gathering, Influencing, Strategising. To do this, they have to regularly meet and discuss with multiple stakeholders in the company. For this reason, meetings are an essential part of a PM’s job. In this blog, we will discuss the absolutely important meetings that Product Managers need to have regularly to keep their work in order. We will also cover:

1. Why these meetings are important?
2. Who should be part of these meetings?
3. Who should be leading them?
4. What could be their frequency?
5. How to Ace these meetings?

Meeting 2 — Team Sync-up

Team sync-ups are meant for you to sync up with your assigned team to check on updates, any bottlenecks they might be facing, answer any queries, inform the team about upcoming tasks, etc. To put it, this meeting acts as a bridge between you and your team and helps you to keep in close communication with them

Why this meeting is important?

1. It is absolutely essential that every Product Manager sets a regular schedule for this meeting and ensures that all the required people are present in this call, because being a PM you will be working with multiple teams and therefore it is important to get everyone together so that dependencies can be discussed, bottlenecks can be figured out and everyone can stay on the same page. Many times, the team discusses important concerns with each other in these calls even though you might think that they will individually reach out to the other team members if required, but mostly that does not happen
2. As a Product Manager, it is your job to be the connecting point in the team and ensure that the team communicates with each other. That is why it is even more important to keep the tone of this meeting very conversational and open. People working in your team come from different backgrounds and so you cannot expect everyone to share all the details and updates about work openly in the call. Therefore, create an environment where people can speak without any fear of judgment. It will help you to estimate timelines better or foresee crises. Remember, most of the problems crop up because people do not communicate openly, if you are able to achieve this within your team, you will be way ahead in your career and life. Read this blog to know how to achieve it: https://productpeas.medium.com/5-hands-on-team-communication-techniques-for-product-managers-b6c52a38bc1d
3. This meeting will help you to keep track of work progress, updates, timelines, issues, and communicate with your team regularly. Doing team sync-ups will keep you on top of your work and will minimize your possibilities of missing out on anything important

Who should be part of this meeting?

Conduct this meeting with your assigned working team i.e. people who are working on the product or features that you are handling. This would include people from the tech team, design team, UX team, Data Analytics, QA, Support. If certain people or teams are not working or not required for that duration, since there are no dependencies on them at that time, you can exclude them from the meetings. For e.g. — QA might not be needed in the call if there is nothing related to testing that is going on or even coming up in the next few days. Similarly, Design or UX might not be needed in all the calls.

The idea is to involve people only if their presence is needed for the call so that it saves their time and energy which they can focus on other tasks. Ensure that you communicate clearly and in advance to the people who need to attend the meeting. If some people can be excluded, then give them heads up at least a day in advance so that they can skip the meeting if they want to, which will help them to plan their day better

Who should be leading this meeting?

This meeting should be managed and lead by the Product Manager

What could be the frequency of this meeting?

Have this meeting twice a week — the first meeting at the start of the week and the second one towards the end of the week. This will help you to start, track, and wrap up each week’s task. Having too many team sync-ups in a week can affect the pace of work. For getting quick updates or sharing something with the team urgently, you can always use group chats on Slack, Google Chat, or any other messaging platform that your company could be using

How to Ace this meeting?

1. Set a conversational tone for this meeting. Create an environment in the meeting which would make people feel at ease and help them to share updates, raise concerns or queries without any hesitation. Read this blog to understand how to achieve that — https://productpeas.medium.com/5-hands-on-team-communication-techniques-for-product-managers-b6c52a38bc1d
2. Come prepared for the call. Prepare notes on what you need to talk about, what updates you need to take, any issues you need to highlight, any heads up you need to give the team for any upcoming work or ad hoc requirements that have come, any further discussions you need to do with any of the team members, etc. Because you are responsible for leading the meeting, so you have to ensure that it is lead in the right direction and the team can benefit from it. For this reason, it is very important to prepare precise notes of what you are going to talk about in the meeting
3. Take notes throughout the meeting. This is a habit that every Product Manager has to swear by in their job. Taking notes in meetings and discussions is extremely important

This habit will make sure:

(1) — You do not forget any information that is discussed in the meeting. You will retain the memory of the meeting discussion

(2) — Taking regular notes and storing them in an organized manner can help you with:

a. Reviewing the progress of the ongoing tasks

b. Refering back to previous meeting notes in the current meeting will help you to identify gaps

c. Easily preparing analysis reports, retro reports for product releases, or any other task

4. Keep this call within 30 mins max. Long meetings wear down people and they lose focus as well. Section out the call, where the first 5mins you can start with some light conversation, then move on to sharing any information or updates from your side. Then you can ask the team leads/members for updates. You can end the call with a recap of what was discussed and finalized in the call

5. Send out MOM — sending out Minutes of the Meeting is a great practice and it again ensures that everyone stays on the same page. This habit will take you a long way of avoiding any communication issues, keeping the team informed better, and keeping your slate clean. Send out a MOM email right after the call to all your working team members (even the ones who were excluded in the call or were absent due to some reason)

Read about the other 4 Essential Meetings that Product Managers need to have regularly

Daily Standup — https://productpeas.medium.com/5-essential-meetings-that-product-managers-need-to-have-regularly-cecc0474b9e0

Business Stakeholders Catch-up — https://productpeas.medium.com/5-essential-meetings-that-product-managers-need-to-have-regularly-3-665293132af3

Retro Meetings — https://productpeas.medium.com/5-essential-meetings-that-product-managers-need-to-have-regularly-4-3570e9261387

User Meetings — https://productpeas.medium.com/5-essential-meetings-that-product-managers-need-to-have-regularly-5-30f8587d3394