The Lazy Person's Agenda Template

# The Lazy Person's Proposal of a Meeting Agenda Template for a Group Practicing S3 Governance ## Driver 1. What's happening 1.1. The current situation We are encountering plenty of opportunities in our meetings to adopt S3 patterns and habits. However, we don't all have the same level of knowledge/practice of S3 to identify and 'artfully participate^1^' within the scope of S3 processes. 1.2. The effect of this situation on the organization As a consequence, the adoption of S3 as a 'way of doing' is slower and opportunities for learning and practicing (of S3) are wasted. 2. What's needed 2.1. The need of the organization in relation to this situation We need to make the most of the limited time we have together and it seems that we all agree that we would like to use S3 to 'do things', then we should put some effort into taking advantage of any and all opportunities to learn and practice S3 within the process of 'doing things'. Setting expectations from the get-go, in the form of an agenda template which informs all of us what 'shape' our participation needs to have in order to better 'fit' within our practice, would be useful. 2.2. The impact of attending that need Attending to this need will helps us 'learn by doing'. It will kindly demand of those of us participating in this group to actively learn and adopt S3 patterns in an 'organic' way, meaning, as the need arises. ## Who is responsible for what? Exactly, responsible for what? S3 suggests that we **classify meetings**, so let's start here. The agenda should ask: What **type** of meeting is it? Sure we have weekly meetings, but stating what type of meeting^2^ it is, will inform us of the goals and deliverables of it. 1. Retrospective 2. Governance 3. Daily Standup 4. Planning and Review Meetings 5. Coordination --- 1. Retrospective meeting **Objective:** Dedicate time to reflect on past experience, learn, and decide how to improve the work process. **Output**: Changes to work process, new tasks, on-the-fly agreements, and drivers requiring an agreement. **Who is responsible?** - Facilitator: Sets the stage, gathers data, generates insights, decides what to do and closes the retrospective. 2. Governance meeting **Objective:** Decide what to do to achieve objectives, and to set constraints on how and when things will be done. (Seems like the majority of our meetings) **Who is responsible?** - Facilitator guides participants through the following steps: - Check-in - Administrative matters - Consent to last meeting's minutes - Agree on date to next meeting (if we adopt the 'different types of meetings approach', seems like this is where we would decide the periodicity of the next meeting, which is suggested at 2 - 4 weeks). - Check for any last-minute agenda items and consent to agenda - Agenda items - Meeting evaluation: Reflecting on interactions, celebrate successes and share suggestions for improvement. - Closing: Check in with each other before leaving the meeting. - Facilitator helps make sure that the scope of this type of meeting falls within: - Any short reports - Evluation of existing agreements due review - Selecting people to roles - New drivers requiring decisions to be made, including: - Forming proposals - Making agreements - Designing domains and deciding how to account for them (e.g., new roles, circles, teams or open teams^3^) 3. Daily Standup **Objective:** Meet daily to organize work, facilitate learning and improve productivity and effectiveness (maybe one day) **Who is responsible?** - Facilitator guides participants through the following tasks: - Organizing daily work - Address impediments/blocks - Adapt existing agreements or create new agreements on the spot 4. Planning and Review Meetings **Objective:** Plan and review work 4.1. Planning meeting **Specific objetive**: Select and estimate work items for the next iteration. 4.2. Review meeting **Specific objective:** Review completed work items and decide on re-work and changes for the next iteration. **Who is responsible?** S3 is not specific on the 'how' of carrying out a planning and review meeting. Would a **retrospective** type meeting fit? (See *Retrospective meeting* above). 5. Coordination Meeting **Objective:** Reporting on and coordinating work across domains. **Who is responsible?** - Facilitator helps - Timebox dialogue and use rounds^4^ where valuable - Where useful, compile an agenda and share it with attendees in advance - Help keep agenda within the following scope: - Cross-domain synchronization and alignment - Prioritization and distribution of work - Responding to impediments ## Description Agenda Template(s) depending on type of meeting: 1. Retrospective and Planning and Review Meetings Template - Welcome and check-ins - Sing [the ODIN shanty](https://hackmd.io/@roberto-mh/H19zqTP6p) - Set expectations: What is the desired outcome of this meeting? - Agenda Review and prioritization: For a retrospective, the agenda items should be relevant to this type of meeting (see *Retrospective meeting* above) - Round of Tensions - Generate insights - Define next steps - Types of work to do (e.g., customer requests, project tasks, reporting tasks, rework) - Due date - Who is working on what? - Set agreements and expections (e.g, definition of done, policy, quality standards) - Check-out 2. Governance Meeting Template - Welcome and check-ins - Recite the ODIN Primary Driver^5^ - Backlog Review - Agenda Review and prioritization - Announcements - Review of Action items - Check-out 3. Daily Standup Meeting Template - What I'm working on today - Is anything blocking me? - What am I working on next 4. Coordination Meeting Template - Welcome and check-ins - Updates and reporting Round (see footnotes for S3 definition of Round) - Recent achievements and progress - Current work and upcoming tasks - Blockers/impediments - Cross-Domain Sync and Alignment Round - Identifying areas requiring cross-domain sync (led by facilitator) - Prioritization of Work Round - Identify priorities for the upcoming period^6^ - Distribute work among Domains - Impediments and Problem-Solving - Identify Cross-Domain impediments - Collaborative problem-solving session - Assignment of action items for impediment resolution (see *Define next steps* in **Retrospective Meeting Agenda Template**) - Check-out - Schedule next Coordination Meeting - Check-out round ## Evaluation process and criteria ### Evaluation Process - Trial period: 3 months - Evaluators: ODIN members - Evaluation space: ODIN meeting ### Evaluation Criteria - Have these templates help us organize our work/time better? - Have these templates help us adopt S3 habits/patterns? - Have these templates improved *Artful participation* (i.e., active follow-up of tasks, better coordination/alignment between participants, Circles, etc., improved S3 skills, improved team support, improved communication within members) - Do these templates help use meeting time more efficiently? - Have these templates helped make decision-making processes smoother and more effective? ^1^. Artful participation is an **individual commitment to**: 1. Actively consider and follow-up on agreements made, in the best way, considering the circumstances. 2. Developer awareness and undertsanding of individual and collective needs. 3. Grow the necessary skills. 4. Support others to participate artfully. 5. Bring impediments and improvement suggestions to the attention of others if necessary. ^2^. Notice that S3 has no classification for a 'working meeting'. ^3^. A group of people who are invited to the work and governance done in a domain when they can. ^4^. Rounds are a group facilitation technique to maintain equivalence and support effective dialogue. In a round, you go around 'in a circle', giving everyone a change to speak. ^5^. We believe that decentralized innovation networks will replace centralized corporations as the primary way we solve hard problems in the world. To that end, we will experiment with and mentor evolutionary organizational principles, and create ways to scale through connecting high-trust spaces so that innovation networks and their members can flourish. ^6^. A *period* refers to the periodicity of the meeting, i.e,. the time until the next **Coordination** meeting.