In the booklet Evolutionary Project Management Methods (pdf, 230 kb), chapter 4^B and 4^C define a weekly 2-step procedure for organizing the Task-cycle. Nowadays, we changed to a 3-step procedure.

During 2003, I was coaching a project team consisting of a Project Manager (PM) and 6 developers. He was doing the 1-to-1's, as we started calling the meetings of the individual project team members with the project management (PM and/or Architect). The first week, the PM had planned 30 min per person for these individual meetings. They took, however, some 1 hour per person. At the end of the day, the PM said: "I don't want these meetings taking 1hr each. That's too much time". "Didn't you use the time on important issues, so, wasn't the time well spent?" I asked. "Yes, it was well spent. Still I want these talks to take not more than 30 min each", the PM replied.

The next week the individual meetings again took about 1 hr per person. I suggested to revise the planning for the next week, to recognize that these meetings apparently needed 1 hr each and that it is better to plan accordingly. This time, the PM told me: "Niels, nice story. With 6 people in the team, I can handle the 1-to-1's in one day, even if they take 1 hr each. Now, what would you do if the team is 15 people?". That was a good question!

I studied what happened between the individual people and the PM during the subsequent 1-to-1and I found that a lot of time was lost in thinking and waiting:
PM: "What are the most important things you should do the next week?"
Team Member (TM): think, think ... PM: wait, wait ...
PM: "How much time would you need to completely finish these Tasks?"
TM: think, think ... PM: wait, wait ...
PM: "How many hours have you available for this project, the coming week?"
TM: "Well, I have to check with the PM of an other project to find out how many hours I have for this project."
Come on! Why couldn't he have checked in advance. Now we cannot make a decision. We're wasting time!

Suddenly I knew the answer: We're going to give them "homework": Every TM can prepare for the meeting by listing what he thinks are the most important things to work on, estimate the time needed and checking how many hours he has available. Then, in the 1-to-1's, all this information doesn't have to be generated. It only has to be modulated. That saves a lot of time! So, a step was added to the procedure, making it a 3-step procedure. In every step as few as possible people attend, but not fewer. In case people complain that they need extra time for this preparation: give the extra time. It will be recovered immediately by the higher efficiency of the process. In some projects, people plan every week a Task for Evo meeting preparation. In other projects, the preparation is done anyway, so no effort is wasted adding it to the list of Tasks every week.

After the introduction of the 3-step plan we found that the 1 hr meetings went down to 20 min meetings. Why the reduction was so big is still unclear. Still in several projects, we see the same figures appearing, so it may have to do with the better overall preparation, so that people immediately come to the point. Team meetings are also typically 20 min, unless we choose to discuss some special issues. People like the short meetings. 

The 3-step procedure is listed here and on one of the "selection" slides (pdf, 44 kb), to be glued to the wall in the project room.