Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Effective status meetings
Have you ever been to a long drawn out status meeting where it seems the sole purpose is for the project manager to drag you through his MS Project Plan, line by excruciating line? This is how not to do a status meeting.
There are some simple guidelines for status meetings and they generally boil down to what you want to achieve. If the idea is to get a status update for each member of a project team, that can be better done one-on-one, although it will take more time from the PM. Instead, try to make effective use of the whole team being in one place to discuss constraints that affect them all.
My agenda for a useful meeting:
- What we have achieved (keep this brief)
- Our focus (again, keep this brief)
- What is stopping us -- where possible, invite comment to resolve constraints that affect the whole team or can only be resolved with a significant part of the team
If these meetings are held daily, standing meetings can be very effective in keeping people brief and to the point.
There are some simple guidelines for status meetings and they generally boil down to what you want to achieve. If the idea is to get a status update for each member of a project team, that can be better done one-on-one, although it will take more time from the PM. Instead, try to make effective use of the whole team being in one place to discuss constraints that affect them all.
My agenda for a useful meeting:
- What we have achieved (keep this brief)
- Our focus (again, keep this brief)
- What is stopping us -- where possible, invite comment to resolve constraints that affect the whole team or can only be resolved with a significant part of the team
If these meetings are held daily, standing meetings can be very effective in keeping people brief and to the point.
