Although every organization has a unique culture, certain practices will tend to lead to more productive meetings. This document promotes informality, but many groups find it useful to adopt formal elements such as following an agenda, making motions, taking votes, and allowing each person to speak during a round of discussion before any person speaks a second time.
Every meeting needs a facilitator and a minutes-taker. The facilitator, sometimes also called the chair or the leader, guides the discussion. The minutes-taker can be chosen at the start of the meeting, but the facilitator should be chosen in advance.
An agenda is valuable for any meeting. Even if the meeting is devoted to a single topic (for instance: "Decide whether to move this project to GitHub"), it can be divided into subtopics to make sure all aspects of the decision are covered.
In general, an agenda is valuable in order to:
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Ensure that all issues are addressed, either in the current or a following meeting.
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Allow participants to give feedback on the focus of the meeting.
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Provide structure and allow the facilitator to keep the meeting moving forward
In order to meet these goals, each agenda item should be associated with a time. Some may require only five minutes. If an item is assigned a time longer than half an hour, consider breaking it into subtopics in order to ensure the discussion doesn’t wander. Examples of agenda items are:
| Item | Facilitator | Time |
|---|---|---|
Kotlin support |
Pradeesh |
20 minutes |
Migration of channels |
Jackie |
10 minutes |
Usually, the facilitators of the meeting prepare the agenda, but they should encourage community members to submit agenda items. An excellent way to remind members of the community of an upcoming meeting (and to encourage attendance) is to send the agenda and a request for feedback out at least one day in advance of the meeting. The agenda should take into account the activities of any subcommittees. One way to ensure a useful agenda is to:
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Look at the minutes from the most recent meeting to determine the tasks assigned, put each task on the agenda, then contact the leaders of each subcommittee to make sure they are available and prepared to report on progress.
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Add upcoming milestones and events to the agenda.
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Review recent discussions to see where there are controversies, confusion, or decisions to be made as a group.
Leaders of subcommittees should also work collaboratively with their main group’s facilitator by keeping upcoming meetings in mind and asking the person preparing the agenda to include important items.
At the beginning of each meeting, we suggest that every member must announce their name and affiliation, or put the information into the online chat or notes.
The meeting’s facilitator is responsible for making sure a meeting is productive and successful. Particularly when working with volunteers, the facilitator should diligently ensure that the meeting is seen as enjoyable and fulfilling, so that the volunteers continue to serve. Part of establishing a positive atmosphere is ensuring safety, so the facilitator ensures that the organization’s code of conduct is followed. But an enjoyable meeting also involves the engagement of its participants as a social experience.
Every meeting is a balance between control and exploration. There are two extremes on this spectrum:
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Highly structured meetings follow the agenda strictly and obey its time limits. If a member wanders off onto a tangent, the facilitator reminds everyone of the item under consideration and brings discussion back to it. These meetings can be productive, but at a cost. The members might miss the change to explore creative alternatives to the assumptions behind the agenda items. Some people will find the meetings constrictive and uncongenial, and might resign.
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Loose meetings allow members to speculate about the agenda items. Often, members start sharing related information. These meetings often depart from the agenda and run late. They get less "done" than the controlled meetings, but they may hit serendipitously on excellent, creative solutions. Many people also find them warm, inspirational, and educational. However, other people get frustrated by the lack of rigor.
Each group has its own dynamic and needs to strike its own balance. The facilitator is responsible for sensing when a digression is productive, and when to pull discussion back to the agenda item.
The facilitator is also responsible for giving everyone a fair amount of time to speak. Small, consensus-based teams can be more informal, but the facilitator should still keep track of who has had a chance to speak. The facilitator should encourage silent members to speak, and should gently encourage someone who is speaking too long to wrap up. A common facilitation technique to broaden participation is to say things like, "Thanks, Lakshmi. I wonder whether other people have made the same observation, and what their views are on the subject."
The concept of "making a motion" is also worth invoking regularly. Even if a decision is adopted by concessions, the chair (or facilitator, which is a more appropriate term for these meetings) should ask someone to state it as a motion. This forces the meeting to be precise in its wording, which is particularly valuable for technical decisions where details make a difference. Some meetings disallow the chair from making a motion, to prevent the chair from exerting undue influence. Instead, the chair can ask someone to state a proposal in the form of a motion, and anyone present can also propose a motion.
In large meetings, a person should second the motion before it is discussed. This prevents a single person from tying up the committee with motions no one else agrees with.
During discussion, members can submit amendments to the motion. This allows them to reword ambiguous statements, and to introduce limitations and exceptions. An amendment is treated like a mini-motion, being discussed and voted on like a motion. If the original person who made the motion accepts the amendment, no further discussion of the amendment is needed.
Someone can also call the question to end discussion and start the vote, or can request to delay a vote temporarily or permanently. Each of these proposals are also voted on.
If a vote is held, each person gets to vote aye, vote nay, or abstain. The numbers of ayes, nays, and abstentions must be recorded in the minutes.
The facilitator can also start invoking formal rules when discussion gets unruly. Signs of an unruly discussion include:
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People interrupting or speaking over each other
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Digressions and off-topic remarks
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Highly emotional exchanges, or insults and attacks, whether or not they are on topic
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People dominating the discussion, and many silent people
Such behaviors must be stopped immediately. They are not only counterproductive, but can be destructive to the entire group. Anyone noticing these behaviors can ask the facilitator to institute some rules of order. It is probably a good idea to do so as a motion that is voted on, to help all participants agree to the decorum.
Rules for formal permission to speak include:
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Each person signals, such as by raising their hand, that they want to speak.
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The facilitator calls on people in the order in which they raised their hand.
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Everyone who wants to speak gets one chance to do so before someone gets a second chance.
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People are allowed to interrupt for a few very limited circumstances:
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To point out that the rules are being violated (point of order)
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To ask a speaker for clarification (point of information)
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To point out extraneous factors getting in the way of discussion—for instance, "Unmute yourself, please" (point of privilege)
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A [discussion of these points from the American Bar Association](https://www.americanbar.org/groups/bar_services/publications/bar_leader/2011_12/summer/debate/) may help explain them.
Minutes are valuable both as a historical record and as a resource for project members. Minutes need not record all sides of a discussion. But the minutes should include:
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The meeting’s date, and start and end times
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Names and affiliations of all attendees
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Who chaired the meeting
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Each decision on which a vote was taken, and the numbers for, against, and abstaining
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Assigned tasks, with deadlines and the names of the responsible people, along with the members of any subcommittees formed to handle the tasks.
It is surprising how often meetings wrap up without a clear understanding of how to carry out the decisions. Every time a decision is made, a concrete task should be created and assigned to an individual or subcommittee. If a subcommittee is set up, it should ensure continuing action as follows:
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Appoint a chair or co-chair for the subcommittee
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Set a time for a subcommittee meeting or determine a method for setting up the meeting
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Set a deadline, or have a clear result to report back at the next meeting of the entire committee
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Ensure that all subcommittee members understand their goal
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Ensure that all subcommittee members can contact one another
All formal aspects of the decision, such as the task, volunteers assigned, and deadline, should be recorded in committee minutes.
A number of tools can aid follow-up and project planning. A simple checklist can make sure nothing is forgotten. Kanban boards are popular in many projects to track the progress on each task. Each task can be tracked as an issue (or multiple issues if needed).
Differences of opinion and differences in personality are not only inevitable but desirable. A key goal of free and open source projects is to represent the views and needs of many different people. All project members should speak up to prevent abuse and enforce the project’s Code of Conduct. To handle violations, please read The tone of the community.
There are steps one can take before and after a meeting to ensure that these differences have a positive impact.
Modern digital forums make it easy to share ideas before a meeting. Thus, ideally, everyone would see a proposal before it becomes a motion at a meeting. Ideally, all meeting participants would also have an idea of the strengths and weaknesses of each option.
But some ideas come up spontaneously at meetings. And some participants don’t have time to read long discussions beforehand. One of the most important benefits of a real-time meeting is the free airing of views. This document has explained earlier how to keep the discussions productive.
There’s a risk of leaving people ill-disposed toward one another or toward the group as a whole, whenever strong negative emotions are expressed or people are criticized in a meeting. It is often a good idea for the facilitator or another member of the group to reach out to people involved on either side of the disagreement, asking whether they felt heard and treated properly. Even if personal differences make it hard for two people to get along, they should be able to participate productively in the group. Personal outreach by a neutral person may help keep them involved.
Avoid discussing technical issues in one-on-one conversations, because this excludes other people from decision-making. The technical issues deserve open discussion in the group. But talking about feelings and attitudes on a one-to-one basis is permitted.