Which 1-on-1s should I prioritize as the tech lead of a big project?

So my general principle when it comes to setting up 1 on 1s as a project lead is to answer the following question:

Who can throw my project under the bus?

And then for all those people, I set up the recurring 1 on 1. 😂

In terms of frequency, my general playbook is to set up a biweekly first. That's the sweet spot where it doesn't feel too frequent, but it's frequent enough to catch problems and prevent alignment issues on a relatively fast time scale.

Zooming out, what's far more important than the initial cadence you set is your ability to adapt and adjust meetings as necessary:

• Sometimes you'll get it wrong with the initial meeting, and it turns out that this meeting you have should be more frequent, less frequent, or just non-existent
• Sometimes the meeting was indeed necessary at a biweekly or even weekly cadence in the beginning when your collaboration with this person was very deep, but it becomes less important over time as that phase of the project shifts
• Sometimes your project blows up due to a lack of alignment with a major stakeholder who you didn't have a 1 on 1 with and you realize that you totally should have had one (this has happened to me a couple times)

When it comes to the common "culprits" for 1 on 1s, I generally do a mix of the following:

1. The lead PM
2. The lead designer
3. The lead engineers across the other stacks from me (so since I'm Android, this will be with iOS and back-end, sometimes web)

The PM/designer ones are much more important early on when the project isn't well defined yet. You can probably drop those over time.

I also recommend these resources:

• [Masterclass] How To Have Impactful 1 on 1 Meetings
• [Masterclass] How To Build Deep Relationships Quickly In Tech
• "How to sequence activities to reduce risk?"