pecha-kucha for Project Status Meetings?
When browsing through Wired Magazine I came across a short article about "pecha-kucha" - a kind of simple set of presentation rules originating recently from Japan: I was wondering if pucha-kucha could be used to speed up project status meetings.
According to Wired, pecha-kucha means "chatter" in Japanese and is a presentation technique created by two Tokio-based architects (Mark Dytham and Astrid Klein, both originally from Europe). The basic idea of pecha-kucha is to limit a presentation to exactly 20 slides where each slide is presented exactly for 20 seconds, i.e., each presentation then lasts for 400 seconds (6 minutes and 40 seconds).
While the original background of pecha-kucha has a lot to do with art and fashion, I was wondering if one could use this technique to speed up project status meetings? The format of the presentation would force the project manager to really keep to the point and concentrate on the most important status information and issues. In addition, it would force the audience to wait with questions until they heard the whole presentation.
I think that this presentation format combined with a standard template for all status presentations of a particular project could maybe make project status meetings much more productive. What do you think: Could this work? Would it make sense for your projects?
Comments on this article
Eva Lang wrote on January 24, 2008 at 13:43 CET
Dear Gerald,
reading through this very interesting article about pucha-kucha (what a funny name!) i have different thoughts I would like to share with you. Yeeesssss! Shorter meetings! I have attended so many very long meetings that did not make any difference to my work. Thinking about the reasons, however, I can identify:
1. lacking preparation: People ar not up to date, they do not know about the agenda, they haven?t read the kind of information that would have been necessary to join in an effective discussion, they do not have a clear focus of what they want to accomplish. AND their teamleader has not asked them to prepare for the meeting adequately (which is his duty after all).
2. People being not focused, talking of very specific details that are of no interest to the other participants AND repeating all over again what has already been stated earlier by another person (is this a typical male phenomenon ;) as I have experienced)
3. People that simple do not belong into this specific meeting the result being that they - even if they formally behave polite - disturb the working-atmosphere of a team of people who really have a common focus. I have made the experience that here in Germany it has become a normal thing to attend as many meetings as possible, as if this was a straightedge for their impact in their organisations.
Eva
Gerald Mesaric wrote on May 13, 2008 at 17:30 CEST
Hi Eva,
sorry for the late response, but I didn't notice your post, mainly because this article is already a little bit older... ;-)
I totally agree with your observations. It's the same here in Austria; especially, #3.
In my company I really try to keep the number of people in a meeting room to the absolute minimum. The reason for this is simple: Every discussion is more efficient and more goal-directed if there are only people who really belong into the meeting.
Regards,
Gerald