Tech roundtable discussions
bring your engineering department together
A roundtable discussion is a meeting where everyone has the chance to participate and express their opinions. If it’s done right it can be a big success but its not always that easy.
Okay, but how does this apply to a Software Engineering department. Just think how many times you’ve been frustrated with how something is happening on your platform or how you work as a department at a specific subject. The same frustrations are usually shared between other members of the team.
Also, imagine how many times you wanted to introduce something new (a tool or a way of working). You can always seek approval from an executive member of your team but it’s not always that easy and probably not the best way to do this.
Tech roundtable to the rescue
For the above reasons and/or to improve the communication and collaboration within the department, a tech round table discussion can be really useful. Try to be as open, transparent and inclusive as possible.
By introducing these meetings to your department you are giving to every engineer a forum where they can express their opinions and ideas. The main goal out of these meetings except improving areas in your department is to engage engineers from a different team to work together.
Tech roundtable flow
This is a suggested flow before, during and after these meetings:
Before:
There is always a facilitator that has some “admin” duties, such as:
- “Recruit” engineers for the next meeting, its good to have a good base of engineers and try to rotate as much as possible. This will vary based on the size of the department.
- Create a poll with 3–4 topics so people can vote what will be discussed in the next meeting(To gather these topics have a brainstorming session)
- Run the meeting and try to keep it on track
During:
- Meeting needs to have an agenda and strick timelines
- Spend the first 5–10 minutes reviewing actions from the previous meeting
- Keep meeting notes with basic discussion topics, participants and action items
- Spend the last 5–10 minutes assigning these actions and deciding who will be the next facilitator
After:
- It’s really important to share the meeting notes and a short summary with the rest of the department
How I will find time for the actions?
This is one of the hardest questions to answer! How we can fit these actions to normal product work!
It’s very important to tag all actions that come out of it with reasoning for their importance. It can be something like scalability, time to deliver, security, innovation, etc...This is essential to justify the necessity of these actions to other non-technical stakeholders.
The prioritisation and visibility of these actions need to be iterated a lot to determine the best approach for your department. You can use shared boards(Jira/etc..) to increase visibility or take them into account during team planning.
Summary
This is not a silver bullet but you will see important things discussed and get done. This is also a chance to work with someone from another team in something that will have a positive effect on both of you and possibly the rest of the department.
Enjoy!
