Meeting thoughts in a virtual world – A PM perspective

I’m old enough to remember when you wanted to get a team together; you’d grab a room or maybe a few chairs in the breakroom and figure things out. Sometimes, these impromptu meetings were more productive than some within the project governance and other formally structured sessions. The reason is that these discussions revolved around topics such as mitigating risk, resolving an issue, potential time delays, and other subjects that often occur on projects throughout the day. After all, isn’t that why my fellow PMs and I are employed?

Today we live a significant part of our work lives within a virtual world, and our teams are scattered throughout the US and globally; this has taken away many of those so-called elevator or hallway chats. Instead, many conversations now take place strictly in meeting content, where you often struggle to find an available time, even for a few folks. The temptation to schedule is there because you can’t just walk down the hall and chat.

How do you replace those invaluable unstructured discussions? Emails are one solution; with those, I like to use a rule of thumb that if the number of emails exceeds 5, an alternate form of communication is necessary.

What is another potential option?

I suggest using collaboration platforms such as MS Teams or Slack for some of your project communication. These are the new virtual breakrooms and hallway chats, replacing that walk down to someone's office or cubical. But be mindful of those statuses that show someone is unavailable, the chat room’s equivalent of shutting your door, or that in a meeting sign outside the cube.

A couple of topics that you might consider using a chat for:

• Discussing a timeline question, paste that activity or activities to the chat; the same thing would apply to an action item or closure on a decision within your RAID.

• Do you need to pull in a few members, not the whole team? Then, take advantage of the group chats and draw in those who might be required. But, again, be mindful of status availability.

  • If necessary, you can start up a meeting. The difference is that you’re not searching for openings to resolve; you’ve already got everyone’s attention.

So before jumping into setting up that ½ hour or so discussion, you may want to consider whether the topic requires a full agenda, with formal minutes and other required meeting deliverables, or is it something that if that person were just down the hall, you would wander over and discuss the topic at hand. If it is the latter, look at her availability within the platform, and if it’s green, start with a quick “Hi, do you have some time for a chat.” With that, you’ve just pulled up that virtual chair.

Do you want to discuss this and other ways to improve communications and facilitate project activities? Let’s connect.