The document describes how an operations team improved their productivity and work environment through changes to their meetings and processes. They reduced time spent in communication tools like Slack, increased engineering time, and streamlined decision making. Their weekly meetings provided a safe space to discuss issues and make immediate decisions. As a result, the team felt more empowered, productive, and able to focus on engineering work rather than meetings and communication. They also improved career development, team health, and advocacy for automation and infrastructure as code. A few challenges remained around timely discussion of all topics and external dependencies.

1. DevOpsDays Ohio 2017 @neilprimmer
The Most
Productive Meeting
In The World

2. DevOpsDays Ohio 2017 @neilprimmer

3. DevOpsDays Ohio 2017 @neilprimmer
What were our problems?
Spent too much time in Slack.
Didn’t trust ourselves to make decisions.
Did not feel empowered.
Felt underproductive and overworked.

4. DevOpsDays Ohio 2017 @neilprimmer
Time spent per week (average):
Slack/Email: 6 hours per Engineer.
IDE/Terminal: 5 hours per Engineer.
Not accounted for above:
Meetings, Jira, Confluence, Collaboration.

5. DevOpsDays Ohio 2017 @neilprimmer
Ops team open items meeting
Safe space:
No recriminations or attacks.
What’s said there stays there.
Everyone is equal.

6. DevOpsDays Ohio 2017 @neilprimmer
Making Decisions
ust yourself to decide, add an item to the meet
wait until the next meeting, make the decision
st your decision, get another team member to

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Meeting document
Anyone can add or reprioritize items.
ecide what to discuss at beginning of meeting
items we’ve discussed, action items, and outc

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Meeting topics
7 months of weekly meetings.
62 topics discussed.
23 immediate decisions.
28 post-meeting action items.
11 resolved externally.

9. DevOpsDays Ohio 2017 @neilprimmer
Time spent per week (average):
Slack/Email: 3.5 hours per Engineer.
IDE/Terminal: 9.5 hours per Engineer.
42% reduced time in Slack.
90% increased time in IDE/Terminal.

10. DevOpsDays Ohio 2017 @neilprimmer
Confidence to advocate
ground for time to build tests and write docum
meeting attendance to focus on more produc

11. DevOpsDays Ohio 2017 @neilprimmer
Confidence to advocate
esponsibilities from Infrastructure and Operat
ented a rotation, similar to on-call, for paying

12. DevOpsDays Ohio 2017 @neilprimmer
Rebranding
ations vs Infrastructure, while building awaren
sprint workflow, aligned with other Engineeri

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Rebranding
vice infrastructure via Infrastructure as Code (
e pairing with Engineers on other teams to red

14. DevOpsDays Ohio 2017 @neilprimmer
Automation Advocacy
lt, full CI/CD pipeline with containerized comp
services to support CI/CD automation and de

15. DevOpsDays Ohio 2017 @neilprimmer
Career growth
Advocate for personal development time.
ew of career goals and discussing how we can

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Career growth
ith choice of conferences, rather than team co
nfrastructure team Engineers to contribute co

17. DevOpsDays Ohio 2017 @neilprimmer
Team health
Temperature check each other often.
courage each other to take time off when need

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Team health
reduce ‘bus test’ failures, and resultant hero
nize and reinforce behavior that discourages b

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What has gone less-than-well
ics means some don’t get addressed in a time
at require external change to address can wit

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What has gone less-than-well
circles, leading to emotional and mental exhau
ividual biases result in impasse for some topi