Background: Meeting Facilitation is Challenging
Even engineers have meetings. These discussions or reviews can become quite heated and cover topics not only related to software development but often also organizational development.
However, we engineers are not facilitators. The quality of a meeting depends on facilitation, but we lack the necessary skills. As a result, meeting quality becomes inconsistent, leading to the following issues:
- Selecting "compatible members" to reduce quality inconsistencies → This increases hiring and onboarding costs.
- Conducting discussions exclusively with managers and senior engineers → This incurs communication costs to convey information to the on-site engineers.
Solution: Using Queues and Stacks
While meeting quality is not determined solely by facilitation, let's focus on facilitation here.
When facilitation can be systematized, it becomes more stable. We introduce two methods: Speaker Queue and Speaker Stack.
By controlling speaking rights using queues and stacks, facilitation becomes more stable. Additionally, since there's visible management, it becomes easier to quantify the quality of the meeting.
Speaker Queue and Speaker Stack
This is a system where speaking turns are managed via queues and stacks.
Basics
When speaking, follow these steps:
- Step 1: Push a button (your name enters the queue)
- Step 2: The facilitator simply picks a name from the queue and gives that person the right to speak
Queuing is a classic approach in system architecture, and the same principle applies here. By using a queue for speaking rights, you can ensure FIFO processing, providing a stable experience for all participants.
Using Stacks As Well
In practice, both queues and stacks are used. A stack serves for "interruptions," processed as LIFO, and handled as a priority until it is empty. When a queue alone cannot handle the complexity of a meeting, a stack allows for interruptions.
Advanced Techniques
As mentioned, the basic form is 1-Stack 1-Queue, but other patterns are also possible.
Although this diverges from the topic of facilitation, I previously wrote HQRST is Recommended for Lightweight Task Management - DEV Community. This covers individual task management using combinations of multiple data structures, and the same idea can be applied here.
For example, you can operate with a 2-Stack 1-Queue system:
- Priority 1: Stack for asking about unknown terms
- Priority 2: General interruptions
- Priority 10: General speaking
This approach allows for facilitation of typical meeting challenges such as "There's a term I don't understand" or "It's not a conducive atmosphere to ask immediately."
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