Remote meetings are the new global reality, which has added an extra layer of complexity when trying to work with multiple teams across the world.

 Some fundamental and practices will ensure that you are successful in managing an effective remote meeting

 The practices can be broken down into 4 areas 

• Technology
• Pre-Meeting Preparation
• Meeting Management
• Post Meeting

Technology

Communications (Voice Video)

Know and test the tools before the meeting. It is awkward and frustrating to learn about a tool while running a meeting simultaneously. Common voice video communication tools are:

• Zoom
• Skype
• Adobe Connect
• WebEx
• Google Hangouts

Collaboration Tools (Collaboration and Sharing)

There are multiple tools that you can use to share and collaborate with the team, these visual and sketching tools help you connect with your attendees: Common tools are

• Mirror
• Miro
• Microsoft Whiteboard (especially if you are using a touch screen laptop and a pen)
• Apple Paint (with iPad as a sidecar)
• Google Docs

Pre-Meeting Prep

Agenda (Intent of the meeting)

Send out the agenda in advance so that everyone is aware of the intent of the meeting. Tools that will help you consolidate your documentation

• Slack
• SharePoint
• Google Docs

Meeting Management

Ensure that there are meeting engagement protocols (ground rules) are laid out, agreed, and understood by the team

Ensure everyone understands the objectives of the meeting

• Have backups available (if you can run the meeting from your phone if there is a internet or power outage
• Remind the meeting objectives
• Ask people to quickly introduce themselves (for Planning, Product Backlog Refinement and Review sessions)
• Reiterate the ground rules for communication at the onset of the meeting
• Have time boxes agreed on for discussions
• Prioritize any incremental discussion outside of the agenda

Post-Meeting

• Follow up with any notes on the discussions (not needed for Daily Scrum)
• Ensure that any feedback from the Sprint Review is evaluated and then based on the Product Owner guidance it is added to the Product Backlog
• Any action items that come out of discussions on improvements are added as action items for the team and are worked on the development team

 The meeting intent may be the same from the pre-Covid days but the introduction of technology and everyone working remotely adds greater pressure on the person running the meeting. This means they need to be prepared not only about the meeting subject but also the technology.