Agendas lead to more productive meetings

[#1]

I have been in team meetings where, they were basically " free-form discussions."

We'd start with good intentions, but two hours later, no real decisions have been made.

It was frustrating, and the team's energy was draining with each meeting.

The problem?

We needed structure, not just good intentions.

So, we started implementing detailed agendas for every meeting.

At first, it felt a bit rigid, but then with time, our two-hour meetings actually ended in 45 minutes or less.

People came prepared. Decisions were made faster.

But here's the thing - it's not just about having an agenda.

It's about crafting one that guides the conversation without stifling creativity.

We found a balance between structure and flexibility with Rally.

This experience played a huge role in why you can build agendas from your Jira board with Rally.

How do you structure your team meetings?

Have you found any agenda hacks that work particularly well? (👀🟣)

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

[Anne Saunders]

We strongly agree! 

I work with our departments to create and refine Confluence templates for their different kinds of recurring meetings - the weekly / monthly / quarterly ones, the ones every project has, and the ones that just seem to pop up most often. 

That way, there's:

• an agenda that everyone can expect and follow;
• a place for the meeting owner to collect their thoughts without starting at zero;
• a place everyone else knows to look for the notes if they have to miss a meeting;
• sometimes, even a way to get questions answered before the meeting because people check in to see what the meeting owner plans to talk about.

Refinement is still important - when we realize that a particular section gets added frequently, we add it to the template. If a section never seems to get used, we retool it (change the heading or add placeholder text) to get more engagement, or we remove it. 

Every bit worrying about the structure or the format of a meeting that we can alleviate through standardization frees up more brain power to go into planning and executing the meeting, and solving whatever the meeting is there to solve.

[Vishal Biyani]

Ensuring to publish the agenda of the meeting at least a day before, gives the meeting participants time to prepare.

Also, publishing the action items after the meeting ensures that decisions taken in the meetings are acted upon by the responsible POC.

[Stephen_Lugton]

For most of my meetings I use a simple layout:

---

Table of Contents

Date	Attendees

Agenda Item	Notes, decisions and action items

Action Items summary

---

I include the link to the page in meeting invites, and during the meeting I share the page and edit as I go so everyone can see and agree the meeting notes including any actions etc. live.

[Anne Saunders]

@Vishal Biyani We've also found that including @mentions and a date from the Confluence date macro in those action items makes them easier to follow up on for the assigners and the assignees.

[Evan Fishman - Rally for Jira]

@Vishal Biyani Agendas will always lead to more productive meetings, at Rally I try to set up agendas at least a week before, this way everyone has sometime to review.

One nice thing I do weekly is set up Rally sessions for the whole team where everyone can contribute to the agenda via our plugin. So basically, it is a session where everyone contributes what they want to the agenda. I accept or decline them, and we all have conversations on those items right on Rally asynchronously . It's a session that runs for 48-72 hours. 

This basically removes the need for constant reviews, feedback or collaboration meetings for us, and everyone gets to contribute on their own time. 

[Evan Fishman - Rally for Jira]

@Stephen_Lugton, Love this! We should have a chat about how Rally mirrors your layout almost exactly lol.