Effective communication is crucial to the success of custom software development projects.

As simple as it sounds, you may be surprised by how much traction your team gets when you add a regular meeting pulse to your process. The key is establishing and sticking with a steady, dependable schedule that stakeholders can depend on. Like clockwork, your projects will gain clarity and momentum in a way they never did before.  

A regular cadence of meetings establishes specific intervals throughout the project’s lifecycle where stakeholders will share information about the project’s status. By doing so, team members can collaborate more effectively and address potential obstacles early before they become more significant issues. Moreover, the regular meetings incentivize each stakeholder to keep their deliverables on schedule, knowing they must report their progress to the rest of the team.

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4 Key Meetings for Success

Adding four key meetings to your project’s process will help ensure success.

The Four Key Meetings Are:

• Daily Stand-up Meeting
• Project Review
• Project Retrospective
• Project Planning Meeting

Each of these meetings adds a unique element to the project. When they are added, your project will include the following:

• Daily status updates that empower your team to identify problems and react quickly.
• Regularly scheduled product demonstrations facilitate group discussion of functionality and user interface.
• Group review of the project’s health and discussion of how to improve helps keep morale high.
• Dedicated planning sessions where upcoming tasks are reviewed and groomed to ensure all the details are captured.

Daily Stand-up Meeting

Length: 15 minutes
Frequency: Daily

The Daily Stand-up is a brief meeting each day, preferably first thing in the morning. In this meeting, team members discuss what they worked on the previous day, what they plan to work on that day, and any potential obstacles.

The format is simple. Team members gather in a hallway or common area to emphasize the brevity of the meeting. Next, the team goes around the circle, and each member shares an update in this format:

1. What have you done since yesterday?
2. What do you plan to do today?
3. What roadblocks do you face?
4. What questions do you have?

The facilitator will note any roadblocks and questions and arrange follow-up meetings to resolve them.

The Project Review

Length: 1 – 1.5 hours
Frequency: Weekly or every other week

The Project Review meeting is where team members demonstrate what they worked on and receive feedback from other stakeholders. It’s essential that this meeting include all stakeholders in the project and not just members of the development team. Representatives from marketing, product management, and sales should be included. This will help ensure vital perspectives are shared across the entire time.

This meeting is typically 1-1.5 hours, depending on the size of the team. The goal of this meeting is to review what has been done and determine if the completed tasks achieve the desired goals and objectives.

The Project Retrospective

Length: 15-30 minutes
Frequency: Weekly or every other week

The Project Retrospective often happens directly after the Project Review. This meeting only includes participants actively working on project tasks (e.g., developers, testers, project managers, etc.). In this meeting, the team reflects on the project and discusses what went well, what didn’t, and how they can improve. Similar to the Daily Stand-up meeting, it is common to go around the room and ask each person to share thoughts about these 3 points. Before the meeting is concluded, the team votes on one thing they will focus on improving before the next Project Retrospective. 

The Project Planning Meeting

Length: 1 hour
Frequency: Weekly or every other week

The Project Planning meeting is where the team plans which tasks they will work on next. The Project Manager will facilitate this meeting, fostering discussion around each task to ensure each is well-defined and understood. The team will work together to estimate the effort needed to complete each task. Finally, they will select a specific set of tasks to take on and commit to achieving them before the next Project Review meeting.

Conclusion

In conclusion, establishing a regular cadence of meetings allows the team to collaborate effectively and address any potential obstacles before they become significant issues. It is the Project Manager’s responsibility to establish this regular cadence of meetings and ensure that everyone on the team is informed about the project’s progress. Doing so will help ensure that your custom software development project is successful, on time, and within budget.

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