The product manager proposed 2 changes for communication: (1) instead of him doing the stakeholder demo bi-weekly on Monday for the new features, he wants the developers to do so after each sprint on Thursday. The benefits: stakeholders and tech team get to know each other and tech team could practice presentation, coached by the product manager; (2) The Monday demo time will be re-positioned as an open hour for team to bring topics for discussion or ask questions. I think both are great ideas and I like the (different) team engagements though I had questions on the ‘open’ hour…
Should it be ‘fully’ open: would people come? What would people want to talk about? (vs. listen-in or complaining). Should we prepare session with theme and invite target audience, e.g. project management team, community management team, or community partners? Also, open to whom?
The product manager would like to start small, with the stakeholders on the original invited list, while keeping the first few sessions ‘free flow’, no agenda. People come as they wish and bring whatever they’d like to talk about.
I might do it differently yet I supported the product manager to try. I like he took the initiative. We can see and adjust as we go~
We had first ‘open hour’ today. Five people showed up, smaller than usual attendance, though it could also because a few people were on vacation. Nevertheless, we had productive discussions on several key topics and resulted in a few follow-up actions. And, more importantly, the product manager felt good about how he did and how the session went. It was a good start, even better, to encourage team to try/ do things differently, stretch, and expand the comfort zone.