Managing Meetings (Spec Team lead and SA)

• Best Practices for Virtual Meetings
  • . Source: UC California Digital Library
  • . Source: Facilitate.com
• Always communicate meeting agenda and goals in advance
  • is available for your team use
    

• Maintain Meeting Minutes to capture discussions & brainstorming (can be annotated into specs)
• Document your decisions
• Utilize a "parking lot" to keep discussions from going off track - come back to these issues at a later date
• Due dates - assign and communicate due dates for any tasks
• Time-limit brainstorming & discussions in order to accomplish meeting goals
• No meeting ends without assignments, next steps
• is a useful tool for surveying meeting availability

Managing (leveraging) Resources

• Ask your SME Team for Help
• Use the (historical) OLE Functional Specifications Facilitators Guide for team start-up
• Use your Kuali OLE distribution list for discussions - this saves all emails to KIS team page archive
• Define leads for tasks (spec writing vs modeling vs data requirements vs testing)
• Make assignments vs requesting help, as needed
• Celebrate decisions and accomplishments
• See Teams & Collaboration Lists to see who else is working on specs & collaborate overlaps

Managing Deliverables & Team Documentation

• Maintain all team documents in your folders (even if you draft offline, add to team folder - not via email)
  

• Start with a schedule and a plan
• Sample Specs-Reviews-Coding-Testing timeline (example only)
• Developing Workflow and Dataflow Models for Specs
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  • Gliffy Diagrams
  • Visio (if license)
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  • Microsoft Office
    • Word
    • Powerpoint
• Balsamiq - Wireframes (user interface design)
• Use the OLE Documentation & Specification Templates (user story spec template, whitepaper template, models, data requirements, test scripts)

Managing Scope of Specifications

• Think "critical path" - not every alternative workflow
• 80/20 rule - for agreement in discussions, and for documenting critical workflows in specs
• Try to stay within the scope of work and story goals of the assignment
• Other teams, SME Team reviews, gap analysis and testing will pick up alternate workflows or missed requirements

Prioritization of User Stories

• This is an iterative process - work with Project Team and Scope Team
• Leverage other SME Team leads to find the optimal process
• Use the work that's come before - prior specs, investigations to guide prioritization
• KISS - get some spec teams started, then evaluate as you go
• Utilize the OLE Roadmap and Implementation Schedule for priorities in planning

Statements of Work/Organizing Assignments

• Formulate SOW's for each spec team (see SOW template & samples)
• Use the SOW as a template for thinking through assignments
• Leverage your SME Team's expertise to get this started
• KISS - you don't have to know everything, but can draft Goals to assist team efforts

Managing competing priorities

• Stagger spec team starts - have multiple teams going, but stagger them to manage spec writing vs. review periods and re-prioritization
  • Start Spec Team #1
  • Start Spec Team #2
  • Complete Specification reviews for Team #1
  • Start Spec Team #3
  • Complete Specification reviews for Team #2
  • ...and so on...
• Have SME Team members be "owners" of different tasks and administration
• Circulate agendas and action lists for commitments by SME Team members
• Solicit help from the Functional Council
• Rotate meeting facilitation based on topics

Specification Reviews

• Leverage the expertise of your SME Team
• What's missing in specs? (initial Gap Analysis)
• What's in specs that needs more details? Send back to spec team with comments.
• You don't have to rewrite the specs - leverage your Subject Matter Experts on spec teams by giving them feedback
• Keep it moving - use email distribution lists to facilitate offline work and assignments between meetings

Gap Analysis

• "You know what you know" - now use it!
• This is iterative process - things will get missed
• Testing, other specs, and other teams can often identify anything you've missed
• Be critical, be thoughtful, but avoid "analysis paralysis"

Technical tasks and needs, as identified

• Utilize your Technical Council member to lead technical investigations
• Contact TC members on other SME Teams or the Technical Council distribution list for more support
• Talk to Project Team, Developers - facilitate joint efforts & understanding
• If you've identified a critical technical need or roadblock, maybe someone else has too - communicate with other SME Teams & Project Team