Today we had a meeting. A meeting with a customer. It was one of the worst meetings I’ve been to in a long time[0]. Not because there was a lot of anger or problems or anything. It was just very unstructured.
Theres six of us in the meeting, two techies from the customer, two business guys from my company and us two techies. We’ve all been in the industry for a number of years. Theres a need they need addressing, they don’t really understand it but they know they want dealt with. We don’t think what they’re describing will be able to do the job that we think they want it to do.
We end up arguing over syntax when we should be figuring out the semantics. Noone is in control. It shouldn’t be my place to do that, I don’t want to wrestle control away from my companies directors. Not unless they want to give me control. And I don’t think they know me well enough to trust me to do that yet.
And now its my job to write up the requirements document.
Do you know how to hold a meeting? Do you find that people drift off topic? What can you do about that? Do you need to do anything about it?
[0] Notable career lowlights so far being the Racal Mug Incident, and the Yokoyama Torture.
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