Meetings and Meeting Tools

Here, you'll find a list of tools folks at CivicActions use to schedule meetings, along with information about some specific meetings at CivicActions.

General meetings

Your own

Remember that you can book time on your own calendar. We recommend blocking off your own "free" time in two-to-four hour chunks to complete tasks.

Also, if you're planning a meeting, be sure to state your goal (what the meeting is and what it isn't) in an agenda and invite description.

All Hands Calls

Our weekly all hands call includes everyone across CivicActions, and it's how the team disseminates news, updates, and congratulations. It takes place on Mondays at 10am PST and monthly on Fridays at 1pm PST. You aren't required to attend the all hands, but you are strongly encouraged to – it's where big announcements are made, and attending is a great way to put names to faces. The agenda is posted beforehand in #announcements and chatter during and following the call happens in #ahc. You can submit ideas for future all-hands calls on the All Hands Call (AHC) Planning Trello board. We also have an hour-long monthly all hands call. Upcoming monthly AHCs are announced in the #announcements channel.

All Hands Calls Overview

  • We use Zoom for this (see more about Zoom)
  • Everyone on team is encouraged to join
  • Invites with links are sent out the day of in #announcements
  • Meetings occur frequently as listed below
Every Monday
  • Length of call: 30 minutes
  • Topics can range from a summary of a book, to staying balanced, to project overviews, to deep dive into a tool or module, etc
  • This call is led by our peers and anyone can lead it!
  • Want to sign up to present? Use the AHC Trello board
Once a Month
  • Length of call: 1 hour
  • Topics are usually company standing, sales pipeline, new hires, new projects, big announcements
  • Led primarily by the management team

Pod Calls

Weekly pod calls help us stay in touch and in tune with each other. These are loosely arranged by time zone, and are generally casual and chatty in tone.

  • Weekly pod calls are Orion, Pyxis, Hydra
  • There is a focus to connect with team members outside your project
  • Pod calls help us feel connected with the team as a whole
  • We discuss a topic of common interest or give project updates

Daily Scrum Calls

Daily scrum calls are project-specific meetings. These short meetings are a scrum ritual for shared storytelling. Standups usually take this form:

  • Balance score: (1-10)
  • Yesterday: I did this thing.
  • Today: I plan to do this other thing.
  • Blockers: This is currently or potentially inhibiting me from doing what I'd like to do.

For more specific information, see Daily Scrum Calls.

Retrospectives

Another project-specific meeting is the retrospective (called a retro, for short). This usually happens at the end of a sprint and takes between 30 minutes to an hour.

The idea behind the retro is pretty simple: This meeting provide an opportunity for the team to reflect on how it's working. Like standups, retros are another project-governance meeting.

For more specific information on Retrospectives, see Sprint Retrospectives.

Sprint planning

The last project-specific meeting is sprint planning. Sprint planning takes many forms at CivicActions, but the goal is to come together to decide what to do (and how to estimate the work being done) during an upcoming sprint.

For more specific information, see Sprint Planning Meetings.

Backlog grooming

Backlog Grooming meetings are a chance to update and prioritize stories in the product backlog so that we know what's available for upcoming sprints.

For more detail, read our Backlog grooming page.

Tools

Here are links to more information about how CivicActions uses specific tools to facilitate meetings.