Designing Effective Multi-team System Meetings

Meetings are often a source of contention in the workplace. People frequently bemoan sessions that could have been resolved with a simple email. For knowledge workers especially, meetings can be a major disruption, creating delays and inefficiencies due to the cognitive cost of context switching. Yet, meetings also offer undeniable benefits: they bring people together to solve problems that might otherwise linger, provide opportunities for peer-to-peer learning, and keep everyone aligned and pulling in the same direction. For PMOs managing large portfolios or complex software delivery environments, meetings shouldn’t be viewed as isolated events. Instead, they must be approached strategically, as interconnected elements within a broader multi-team system (MTS).

What Is a Multi-team System in the PMO Context?

In a PMO context, an MTS often manifests as:

• Project Teams: Each focused on delivering specific deliverables or outcomes.
• Technical Teams: Groups like software engineering, infrastructure, or DevOps that cut across projects to provide support or build shared capabilities.
• Programme or Portfolio Teams: Groups with multiple projects that require coordination to achieve one or more business objectives

Drawing on Team Topologies, some of these teams can be further categorised into interaction types that guide how they communicate:

1. Collaboration Mode: Teams work closely together to deliver shared outcomes, often requiring frequent inter-team meetings to coordinate efforts.
2. Facilitating Mode: One team enables another by providing expertise or removing blockers, typically necessitating specific knowledge-sharing or problem-solving sessions.
3. X-as-a-Service Mode: Teams consume predefined outputs or services from other teams, benefiting from lightweight interactions such as service-level agreements rather than frequent meetings.

Understanding these modes helps PMOs tailor meeting cadences and formats to the nature of team interactions.

Insights from Recent Research

Recent research into MTS meetings, published in Organizational Psychology Review, has outlined six key propositions that PMO Managers should consider when designing meetings. These insights highlight how MTS attributes influence meeting effectiveness:

1. Inter-team meetings are particularly important for achieving overarching (MTS-level) goals when component teams are highly interdependent.
2. Prioritising component team meetings over inter-team meetings can benefit component team goals but may harm overall MTS goal performance, especially in high-interdependence environments.
3. Component teams with high interdependence but fluctuating interdependencies over time require frequent inter-team meetings to manage task ambiguity and align shared mental models.
4. Frequent inter-team meetings in MTSs with stable interdependencies and low inter-team task interdependence can decrease engagement, satisfaction, productivity, and performance at both the team and system levels.
5. As MTSs become less hierarchical and more egalitarian, meeting facilitation responsibilities must be shared among members to ensure effectiveness.
6. Inter-team meeting facilitators who prioritise the interests of specific teams over system-wide goals can negatively impact meeting outcomes and overall MTS goal achievement.

Designing Effective MTS Meetings for PMOs

PMO Managers can adopt the following strategies to improve MTS meeting effectiveness:

1. Structure Meetings by Levels of Scope

Define clear boundaries for intra- and inter-team meetings. For example:

• Intra-team meetings (e.g., daily scrums): Focus on project-specific or technical team tasks and deliverables.
• Inter-team meetings (e.g., programme syncs / PI Planning): Concentrate on cross-project alignment, dependency management, and portfolio-level outcomes.

Use the principle of minimising cognitive load by clearly delineating meeting responsibilities to prevent unnecessary complexity.

2. Appoint Boundary Spanners

Boundary spanners are individuals who ensure information flows smoothly between teams. These could be:

• Programme Managers overseeing dependencies across projects.
• Release Train Engineers (in SAFe environments) ensuring alignment within Agile Release Trains.
• Agile Coaches or scrum masters
• Enterprise/Solution Architects with a high level, cross boundary perspective
• Line Managers, especially in matrix organisations
• PMO teams frequently take on boundary spanning roles, enabling communication between teams and supporting decision making.

4. Tailor Meeting Cadences to Interdependencies

Adjust the frequency and format of inter-team meetings based on the degree of interdependence:

• High Interdependence: For closely connected teams (e.g., a software team and a testing team), frequent syncs are essential.
• Low Interdependence: For loosely coupled teams, ad-hoc or milestone-driven meetings might suffice.
• Remember to consider the wider organization – there are often areas of high interdependence between projects and operational teams that get overlooked, causing painful course corrections further down the line.

5. Invest in Tools for Real-Time Coordination

Modern project management tools like Jira, Confluence, or Miro can supplement meetings by providing a shared source of truth. Use these tools to:

• Track dependencies and blockers in real time.
• Share updates asynchronously to reduce the need for excessive meeting time.
• Consider recording videos or using AI summary tools such as otto.ai to allow people who do not directly attend meetings to catch up on decisions that were made.

Transforming Meeting Culture

For PMOs, optimizing MTS meetings is as much about culture as it is about structure. By fostering a culture of alignment and collaboration:

• Encourage Transparency: Share key decisions, risks, and blockers openly during inter-team meetings.
• Focus on Value: Use meetings to tie team activities to programme or portfolio-level outcomes.
• Promote Inclusivity: Ensure all voices, from project managers to technical contributors, are heard in inter-team forums.

By designing effective MTS meeting structures, PMOs can ensure that meetings are not just necessary but also strategically effective.

Moving Forward

As PMOs operate at the heart of programme and portfolio delivery, mastering the art of designing MTS meetings can unlock significant value. By thoughtfully designing and facilitating these meetings, PMOs can ensure seamless communication across teams while maintaining strategic alignment.

For PMO Managers, the challenge is clear: Elevate meetings beyond routine status updates to forums for collaboration, decision-making, and value creation. By doing so, your PMO will not just support delivery—it will lead it.