Sprintly 1 on 1s

I have been doing on one one meetings with my team for the last couple months. Or more realistically 2 on 1 meetings since the Project Managers at my employer tend to be involved in everything. Despite being only 15 minutes long, it takes 2 hours to do all eight of them. Typically, we will ask, “How are you doing? Is there anything you thought was good or bad in the sprint? Is there anything you need to do your job?” The meeting ends up being a light chat where we can talk about issues in the project. Things that haven’t been fixed yet. Or ideas that the team member had, but didn’t want to bring up in standups. Often all people can think of is an outstanding issue that we haven’t been able to get management to solve, and we just promise to follow up on it. I find that the 1 on 1 meeting works best for the more subdued and introverted team members who don’t like to speak up as much. They have good ideas on the project, they just will not bring them up publicly.

Some people recommend doing weekly 1 on 1s, we ended up doing biweekly meeting since we are doing two week sprints anyway. I think that I am accessible enough to the team, but since some of our people are in another office it might be worthwhile to meet with them weekly.

Try doing regular 1 on 1 meetings with your team. I find its really helpful with less outspoken people!