Neal Whitten presented at PMI-SOC last night. It was good to be reminded of the correct purpose of weekly project meetings. You see, we all have weekly project meetings but quite often we tend to use the wrong approach during the meetings.
Weekly project meetings should focus on anticipating potential problems, preparing corrective actions to prevent potential problems and getting a sense of the overall progress of the project.
Instead of starting your meetings by asking which tasks were completed and which ones were not, start by inquiring about potential problems that may come up next week, next month and so on. Based on the information, you can then come up with corrective actions. After that, you can shift the focus on the third priority, that is, to get a sense of the overall progress of the project.
Connect with Dr. John A. Estrella via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Tags: weekly project meetings
Very good point. Nice to be reminded of it again. Thanks.
Absolutely the right way to do things.
I do find that some attendees at my meetings are confused when I do not provide them with the “normal” structure and agenda, but there is not enough time to go through the niceties.
I want to know what today’s problem is, what we are doing about it, what the next problem is going to be and how can we avoid or mitigate it.
• Further break the meeting into two parts a) Status b) Potential issues.
• Seek status first, this allows team members who do not have any potential issues and are not required to contribute in solution discussions to leave the meeting.
• Hold risk identification and management meetings separately and not mix with status meetings, a status meeting should be short compared to potential issue identification, problem solving or risk management meetings.
• Reason - Very often a status meeting runs in to solution discussions and you run out of time, without rest of the team members getting a chance to provide status updates.
• Clearly identify the purpose of the meeting and time allotted for the activity i.e. Status, Potential issues and finally discussion on finding the right solution.
• As a thumb rule if a problem can not be resolved under 5 minutes, park it and book a separate meeting with only key players, thus respecting the time of other team members.
Ps: I was also present in the evening session, let us meet next time.
Look me up next time Atul.