5 Essential Meetings that Product Managers need to have regularly — (1) Daily Standup
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:
- Why these meetings are important?
- Who should be part of these meetings?
- Who should be leading them?
- What could be their frequency?
- How to Ace these meetings?
Meeting 1 — Daily Standup
The daily standup is a very short (10–15 mins max) meeting conducted at the start of the day to share the day’s agenda, priorities (releases, urgent requirements, setbacks), bottlenecks. Daily stand-ups are usually conducted by the Product team or Project team. Some companies also ask the tech team to be part of this meeting, otherwise, it is mostly product and project managers sharing their daily updates with the rest of their team
Why this meeting is important?
The purpose of this meeting is to keep everyone aligned on an everyday basis, address any bottlenecks or crises quickly, do any resource alignment if required, but most importantly this meeting sets the tone for the rest of the day. Many a time further meetings are branched out with the required team members based on this standup.
The daily standup is an essential meeting for companies following Agile, but even if your company does not follow Agile, this meeting can be very helpful in managing teams and tasks and staying on top of everyday progress, issues, bottlenecks
Who should be part of this meeting?
It is a good idea to not include a lot of people in this call since it has to be a very short call. Extending this call will impact the team's energy negatively and make them tired just at the start of the day. The meeting can be within the Product team including Project managers. Product and Project managers should be able to collect updates from the rest of the team (tech, design, QA, analytics) and present that in the call along with their own day schedule
Who should be leading this meeting?
Daily Stand-ups should be lead by the Product Head if it is a startup or Division Product Head for a larger company. Product Head can also assign a proxy (Senior PM) in case of his absence to lead this meeting and update him
What could be the frequency of this meeting?
As the name suggests, this meeting happens every day of the working week
How to Ace these meetings?
- Take notes of anything important you come across in these meetings and ensure you keep a record of these notes because information is essential to a PM's job. You can refer back to these notes at any point in time and you will be surprised to see that you are more alert and mindful in these meetings when you take and keep these notes
- Be alert and mindful in these calls, do not miss out on any updates that your colleagues are sharing. There would be opportunities where you can contribute to a solution or assist someone in crisis. Your colleague could be talking about an issue, where you might be having the knowledge of how to solve it or you can correct someone’s information, so always pay close attention in this call
- Preparation never fails you. Hence always prepare before the call. Collect updates from tech, design, data, QA, support on a daily basis, and take notes while you do so. Before the call, prepare the meeting notes that you are going to talk about. I can never emphasize enough the importance of preparing meeting notes before the call.
If you want to be seen as a professional in your field then this would be a good place to start. Preparing notes for the call will ensure that you do not extend your talking time beyond 2 mins. Prepare concise notes with bullet points and talk to the point in the call. This will show that you take your job seriously, that you are a professional, and that you respect everybody’s time
Read about the other 4 Essential Meetings that Product Managers need to have regularly
Team Sync-up — https://productpeas.medium.com/5-essential-meetings-that-product-managers-need-to-have-regularly-2-c4f563d52d7e
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
