Implement a structured meeting schedule to keep our experimentation program on track:

• Daily: Hold optional standups to stay nimble.
• Weekly: Conduct planning and learning sessions with prepared agendas.
• Monthly: Review metrics, make decisions, and share insights.
• Quarterly: Align strategy and resources for sustained growth. Ensure everyone is prepared, engaged, and follows through on action items to maintain focus and drive continuous improvement.

Daily Meetings

Daily Standup (5–15 min)

Purpose: A quick check-in to sync on daily goals, remove blockers, and maintain momentum.

Participants: Core experiment or product team (as needed)

Note: Not all teams require a daily standup. Evaluate whether it adds value given the team’s size, complexity, and velocity.

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‍Weekly Meetings

Planning & Hypothesis Grooming (60 min)

Purpose:

• Set clear experimentation goals for the week.
• Prioritize hypotheses, ensuring the team is aligned on which tests to run next.
• Discuss upcoming experiment requirements (design, dev resources, etc.).

Participants: Experimentation core team (Product owners, analysts, designers, developers)

Optional prompts:

• What roadblocks do we have this week?
• How can we move past blockers and affect velocity?

Why it matters: This weekly meeting ensures the team stays focused and aligned on the most impactful experiments, optimizing resources and driving consistent progress.

How to win: Make sure that participants come prepared to the meeting ideally with all information centrally available and documented upfront. The meeting's goal is to align and discuss, not come up with impromptu ideas.

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Test & Learn Session (60 min)

Purpose:

• Review results from the previous week’s tests and add new insights to the learning repository.
• Discuss what worked, what didn’t, and why.
• Align on any immediate adjustments for ongoing experiments.

Participants: Core team plus any stakeholders interested in the latest insights

Why it matters: This session enables the team to regularly review and share experiment insights, allowing informed adjustments and sustained momentum.

How to win: The goal is – even if integrated into another meeting – to aggregate and share learnings, so make sure that you're discussing learnings and new insights and how they connect to your overall strategy.

Optional: Integrate these two weekly meetings if team capacity is limited, starting with planning and ending with a review of recent learnings. Alternatively schedule the learning meeting on a bi-weekly or monthly cadence, but remember: every week without learnings is a lost.

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Monthly Meetings

Monthly Retrospective (60 min)

Purpose:

• Reflection on the Past Month: Discuss what went well, what didn’t, and why.
• Continuous Improvement: Identify areas where the team can improve collaboration, communication, tool usage, or processes.
• Actionable Takeaways: Agree on 2–3 concrete improvements or experiments to run on the process itself.

Participants: Core team only

Why It Matters: This meeting allows the team to reflect on the past month, celebrate successes, and identify areas for improvement. It ensures continuous enhancement of collaboration and processes, driving greater team effectiveness and efficiency.

How to Win: Foster a culture of open, honest feedback focused on identifying tangible ways to improve team effectiveness and efficiency. Conclude with a clear, actionable plan detailing how to implement these improvements in the upcoming monthly cycle.

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Monthly Planning, Decision & Process Meeting (90–120 min)

Purpose:

• Metrics & Performance Review: Evaluate key input/output metrics (test velocity, win rate, resource utilization) and assess overall experimentation health.
• Decision-Making: Review recent experiment outcomes and cumulative learnings. Decide which experiments to scale, pivot, or discontinue.
• Prioritization & Resource Allocation: Confirm or adjust strategic priorities for the upcoming month.
• Process Improvement & Brainstorming: Identify common blockers, refine the testing process, and generate new hypotheses or solution ideas for upcoming tests.

Participants:

• Core team (Product owners, analysts, UX, development)
• Key functional leads (e.g., analytics, product management)
• Leadership and stakeholders as needed to inform decisions

Why It Matters: This meeting keeps the experimentation program aligned with strategic goals by reviewing key metrics and prioritizing experiments. It ensures effective resource allocation, addresses process challenges, and fosters continuous improvement to drive business growth.

How to Win: Arrive prepared with current, accurate performance metrics and a concise summary of key experiment outcomes and learnings. Have clear decision-making criteria on hand to determine whether to scale, pivot, or discontinue each experiment. Include a structured segment for brainstorming new ideas, and conclude the meeting with a well-defined, prioritized roadmap and any necessary process adjustments for the upcoming month.

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Quarterly Meetings

Strategic Alignment & Integration Session (60–90 min)

Purpose: Step back and take a strategic, big-picture look at your experimentation program to ensure it’s aligned with the company’s growth objectives. Confirm that you have the right mix of people, data, and decision-making processes in place to sustain momentum and drive meaningful results. Be ready to pivot, adjust, or add resources as needed to stay on track.

Participants: Senior leadership, core team leads, and key cross-functional stakeholders

Prompts:

• Are we targeting the most impactful growth opportunities with our experiments?
• Do we have the right talent, data sources, and tools in our mix?
• How can we improve the speed and clarity of our decision-making?
• What lessons from the last quarter can inform better choices and strategies moving forward?
• Where can we bring in new expertise or datasets to raise the bar on our experimentation efforts?

Why it matters: This meeting ensures that the experimentation program stays aligned with strategic goals, focuses on the most impactful initiatives, and recalibrates resources and decisions for sustained growth.

How to win: Show up prepared with updated performance data and a clear understanding of recent outcomes and their strategic impact. Ensure all key stakeholders know their roles, agree on the path forward, and commit to the concrete actions needed to drive meaningful progress.

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Experimentation Forum (60–90 min) [Company-Wide]

Position Experimentation Forums at a quarterly cadence for a more expansive review and broader participation, depending on organizational size and need.

Purpose:

• Share wins, failures, and learnings across the organization to foster a culture of experimentation.
• Inspire new ideas and encourage cross-functional collaboration.

Participants: Anyone interested across the company

Why it matters: The Experimentation Forum is a tool to get stakeholders outside the core experimentation and product team(s) or those not directly involved with your interested in experimentation. This encourages cross-functional collaboration.

How to win: Make sure to not only focus on wins. While they are important and serve as testimony of your success it is critically important to also share failures and learnings. This helps other teams understand that the idea of experimentation is not just to win, but to learn.

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Ad Hoc

Hot Seats (As Needed)

Purpose:

• Dive deep into specific issues or opportunities that emerge unexpectedly.
• Pull in cross-functional experts to ideate quickly and solve pressing challenges.

Participants: Relevant stakeholders based on the issue at hand

Why It Matters: Hot Seats enable the team to swiftly address urgent issues or capitalize on unexpected opportunities by leveraging cross-functional expertise. This ensures that challenges are resolved efficiently and innovative solutions are implemented quickly, maintaining momentum and preventing bottlenecks.

How to Win: Come prepared with a clear description of the issue or opportunity. Actively engage with cross-functional experts to brainstorm and develop actionable solutions. Ensure that decisions are documented and responsibilities are assigned to implement the solutions promptly.

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Cross-Department Forums (Bi-Weekly or Monthly)

Purpose:

• Bring together experimenters from different channels (email, paid media, product, etc.) to share insights and find synergies.
• Align testing strategies across teams to ensure cohesive growth efforts.

Participants: Representatives from all testing/experimentation teams

Why It Matters: This meeting fosters collaboration and knowledge sharing among testers from various channels, ensuring aligned strategies and maximizing growth through synergistic efforts.

How to Win: Come prepared to share key insights and data from your channels, actively engage in discussions to identify common strategies, and seek opportunities to integrate efforts for cohesive and effective growth initiatives.

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Implementing this structured meeting cadence ensures our experimentation program remains focused, collaborative, and continuously improving. Daily standups keep the team agile, weekly meetings drive progress and learning, monthly sessions facilitate strategic decisions, and quarterly alignments secure long-term goals. Additionally, ad hoc meetings like Hot Seats and Cross-Functional Testing Forums enable quick problem-solving and cross-team synergy, balancing short term actions with long-term strategy for sustained growth and innovation.

Word of Warning

While establishing a structured meeting cadence is essential for our experimentation program, it's crucial to ensure that each meeting is purposeful and adds genuine value.

• Structure and Clear Goals: Every meeting should be well-organized with a clear objective to maximize effectiveness and efficiency.
• Alternative Communication Methods: Not all discussions require a meeting; some can be effectively handled through emails or wiki pages.
• Avoid Meeting Overload: Be mindful of the existing meeting load. Carefully evaluate whether a new meeting is necessary and ensure it truly contributes to our goals before scheduling it.

By adhering to these guidelines, we can maintain a productive meeting environment that supports our objectives without overwhelming the team.

Next Steps

1. Communicate the Schedule:
   
   • Share the meeting cadence document with all relevant team members and stakeholders.
2. Set Up Meetings:
   
   • Schedule recurring meetings in your calendar tool and ensure all participants have access to necessary resources.
3. Assign Responsibilities:
   
   • Designate facilitators for each meeting type and establish a system for tracking action items and follow-ups.

Further Resources

This document is based on what works in our consulting practice, though some of it is inspired by third-party resources and insights from other industry leaders, some of which I'd like to point your attention towards to dig deeper.

• Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule, Paul Graham, 2009
• Cadence for Experimentation Meetings, Speero
• This meeting could have been a wiki page, Lukas Vermeer, 2023
• Experimentation Cerimonies, Nils Stotz, 2024
• Experimentation Cerimonies, Luiza de Lange, 2024 (really liked the visual here)

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