How to Run a Project Team Meeting

Running a project team meeting effectively is crucial for ensuring that your project stays on track and that all team members are aligned with the project's goals and progress. Here's a standard agenda that you can follow to make sure your meetings are productive and efficient.

Before You Begin

Before diving into the main agenda, address any time-sensitive items. This includes making announcements and checking if any team members need to leave the meeting early. If so, ensure they contribute to the meeting before they leave. If you keep an attendance record, do that quickly.

Additionally, keep an action item list throughout the meeting, which should be distributed to all team members afterward. Record any decisions made during the meeting in a decision log to provide a clear record of the actions agreed upon.

The Meeting

Review Stakeholders

Start by reviewing the stakeholder list. This includes checking for any additions or deletions, updating roles, updating contact information, and noting any changes in stakeholder availability. Keeping this list up to date ensures that all relevant parties are informed and engaged.

Review Requirements

Next, review the project requirements list. Checking for any new requirements and confirm the fulfillment of existing ones. If your requirements include acceptance criteria, tick off any that have been met. This step is essential to ensure that the project meets its objectives and that any new needs are addressed promptly.

Review Activities

Now move on to project activities. Update the durations, work status (e.g., percent complete, canceled, on hold), resource assignments, and effort. This helps in tracking the progress of the project and identifying any areas that need attention.

Review Risks

After that, review the risks list. Look for any additions, deletions, fulfillment (closure), and changes in severity level or your risk management strategy. Managing risks effectively is key to preventing potential issues from derailing the project.

Review Issues

Similarly, review the issues list. Check for any new issues, deletions, closures, and changes in impact level. Addressing issues promptly ensures that they do not escalate and affect the project's success.

Review Expenses

Finally, review the expenses. This includes noting any additions, changes, and updates to the project budget. Keeping a close eye on expenses helps in managing the project's financial health and avoiding budget overruns.

Project EMC2 Can Help

Regular project team meetings are the heart and soul of project execution. This is where the team comes together to make decisions, discuss progress, make work assignments, adjust the schedule, and handle risks and issues.

Project EMC2’s interface is laid out left-to-right to provide a natural agenda for each meeting. Visiting each tab in order and discussing any changes, status updates, reclassifying items, assigning project resources, and adjusting dates ensures that the most critical elements are always covered.

Each tab also includes a built-in checklist to ensure that nothing is overlooked and provides space for detailed action item assignments and date-stamped notes.

But Project EMC2 doesn’t stop when the meeting is over. It goes further and takes care of the post-meeting aftermath of generating status reports, communicating with stakeholders, and sending reminders to project resources, ensuring that offline action items are diligently handled.