Our weekly meeting used to be Monday at 9:30. After about half a year, it moved to Tuesday at 4 p.m.
The reason wasn't elegant, but it wasn't complicated either. Monday mornings, everyone was busy with what the weekend had piled up: alert texts, late-night messages in client groups, loose ends from Friday's release. Bodies in the meeting room, minds elsewhere — ask "any problems?" and everyone says no, then the problems surface one by one on Wednesday.
Tuesday afternoon is different. What was going to break has mostly broken, the replies we were waiting for have arrived, and when someone says "I'm stuck" at that point, they really are stuck.
We also compressed the meeting itself. It used to be an hour; now it's 25 minutes — shorter when we stand. Only three items get covered:
- Of what we said we'd do last week, what didn't move, and who is it stuck with.
- What needs a decision from a client or another party, and who chases it today.
- Which launches are coming next week, and a check of the timings.
No status reports, no code review, no new requirements. Anything needing discussion gets its own follow-up with the right people — it doesn't hold everyone hostage.
For minutes we tried email, then group messages; finally we settled on one shared document, appending a dated block each time. Anyone who missed the meeting reads it themselves — no need to ask. Two years of Tuesdays have accumulated in there now; scroll back and you can tell which weeks were particularly rough.
One side effect: Monday mornings got quiet. Nobody meets, and somehow nothing slipped because of it.
Last week someone suggested moving it back to Monday, since Tuesday afternoons sometimes clash with client acceptance sessions. We counted: two clashes ever. We kept Tuesday.
