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The PM is responsible for setting up a rhythm of project meetings that are appropriate for the project. The budget should dictate the ideal approach. If we are doing a quick project, having 15 minute standups every day will kill our PM budget. If we are doing a $200k site build, skipping the standups is a big mistake.
All that said, we have a typical baseline standard for the meetings that should be run during a new site build.
- A regular stand-up call for the current project team (i.e. the people working on the current phase of work). This can be daily, weekly, or something in between. For a large new build, we recommend daily. This can vary from 5 to 15 minutes. A good running order is:
- Each person please summarize their work on the project since the prior meeting, and should outline their plans until the next meeting.
- If each person has any blockers they are waiting on, they should identify them
- The PM should note any work that is running behind and ask for a status update
- A regular checkin call with the client. Once a week is a good rhythm. The length of the call can depend on the project size. This can be a good catch-all meeting to discuss project details that don’t merit their own separate call. Generally the strategist and PM should be on this call all the time, and other team members should be on as needed. Note that this does not replace the weekly checkin email that the PM should send the client.
- At the start of each phase, an internal kickoff with the full team for that phase. The project QA engineer should almost always be involved, because they are responsible for Accessibility auditing during all design work as well as standard development QA.
- For some phases, a kickoff call with the client. The need for this depends on if we have outstanding questions that the client can help answer; for example, if we need some feedback from them on their intended design aesthetic before starting visual design.
- For design and UX, review calls to look at the relevant deliverables with the client. The specific nature of these depends on the work itself, but generally we want to do this once every two weeks, minimum.
- Prior to each client review, internal "Dry Run" presentations. These serve as practice for the client review and should be set at least 2 days before. The project team’s deadlines should be set such that they are able to present their work in full at this meeting with no caveats – that means the work is done at this point. This is not a status meeting – it is a presentation. The project team should present to someone as if they were the client. The stand-in can be the Organizer, or in some cases, someone from the Sales team, or the CEO. It depends on who can be the best facsimile for the client. From this meeting, the stand-in can provide feedback to the internal team which they can implement prior to the actual client call.
- Regular project-related working sessions as appropriate
Please note that the idea of this meeting is not for everyone to go through the outstanding tasks together. Everyone should be independently checking their tasks and should be responsible for their deadlines. The meeting is to provide general context on status between team members, which may not be easily visible to them through the todos.