Examples of Strategic Patterns
Pattern:
Meeting Minutes
Brief Description:
Meeting Minutes are supposed to capture what is discussed and decided in a particular meeting, usually by a designated attendee, and are meant for all attendees and other people from the project to keep track of progress and decisions, for purposes of maintaining accountability, monitoring and record keeping.
WHAT The decision to take notes for all meetings as the responsibility of one of the team members, and communicating that to the rest of the members concerned regularly. The artifact of communication in this case are the meeting minutes. It can be considered a written history of conversation, perhaps not word for word.
Context:
WHERE
- The meeting minutes pattern normally occurs during regularly scheduled meetings or ad hoc meetings, either in person or over tele or video conferencing. Minutes can be taken at any meeting, but are normally taken in formal, multi-party meetings, which may of a slightly formal nature.
- Minutes are not usually taken at meetings of the form of directed presentations or brainstorming sessions. They are considered more useful for meetings where some sort of decision making or task allocation or progress update is discussed.
WHO
- Usually one person, the designated Point of Contact or Scribe would be responsible to take down the meeting minutes.
- The attendees of the meeting, among other people at managerial posts are the intended audience for the meeting minutes.
- The meetings are meant for internal consumption and are not the type of communication artifact that would be publicly available.
Style:
HOW
- The style of this communication pattern is formal.
- The level of detail captured in the meeting minutes would vary depending on the need from attendees or just what is an agreed-to level of granularity. Minutes can be as detailed as a transcript of the entire conversation, which in most cases would seem unnecessary, or just capturing the main action points that emerged in the meeting as they would be the only relevant decisions that would be useful at a later time, like the next meeting.
Goals:
WHY
- The management goal of having a designated point of contact keeping the communication streamlined and consistent, and having a record of all communication and decisions for reference.
- It facilitates better team management. Within this management pattern, there exist different communication patterns associated with the point of contact. Meeting minutes are one of them.
- Minutes can serve as a means of keeping track of attendance and participation. Some managers might find this a useful tool.
Benefits Analysis:
- All the discussions, and decisions of all meetings are saved for record keeping purposes, to learn from, resolve communication discrepancies later, to allow non-attendees to catch up and to remind everyone of the state of the discussion.
- Also, as a point of contact keeps the meeting minutes, it is a good chance that the scribe would not be actively participating as much as the team members talking but would be paying attention through all of it.
- As one person is the scribe, all the communication would tend to be consistent and follow the same type of style, depth and structure.
- If participants know that the communication is being recorded in some form, they feel the need to participate more actively, as one would under observation. In some cases, it encourages participation.
Risks:
- The risks associated with taking meeting minutes is that more often than not, no one reads them.
- In the absence of their eventual use, they might be considered a waste of time and resources.
- Also, the decision to keep meeting minutes might often be associated with following the norm as opposed to actually acknowledging its benefits and accordingly wanting to use it.
Example:
JoAnn was designated the point of contact in the Seabase I project, her responsibilities included taking notes for all meetings, informing everyone of progress, keeping her team members up-to-date with any communication or decisions.
Contrarily, Seabase II did not have a strategically designated point of contact, however Denise did start performing that role to some extent. As in Seabase II, it was not a strategic move, it can be considered a tactical pattern and is described in that section.