Leading meetings is one of project managers' most critical roles to ensure company goals are met on time and within budget. Research shows that people are more likely to attend, actively participate, and come prepared for a meeting if a functional agenda is provided to stakeholders in advance. 1 The following tips around action items, agenda formats, scheduling, and communication can help you run meetings that matter.
What are Action Items in Project Management?
Building action items into your meeting agenda helps attendees know their responsibilities and the project's next steps. Action items vary in size and scope, and project managers often turn them into trackable task assignments that can be easily referenced to chart progress toward the end goal.
Action items serve several key purposes within a project, helping with organization, accountability, workload balance, and time management. Work management platform Asana recommends incorporating three key components: 2
- Who is responsible for the action item?To ensure work is completed, everyone on the project should be clear about task ownership.
- What action is taking place?Use specific, deliverable-driven language and start your sentences with verbs.
- When do action items need to be completed?Set clear deadlines that account for team members' workloads and other responsibilities.
Sample Action Items
Action Item 1: Schedule monthly vendor meetings with the UX team, project lead and program director.
- Owner: [Name/Role]
- Deadline: The first monthly meeting must be held by June 15.
Action Item 2: Order booth exhibits for trade show displays (banners, posters, foam boards, flyers).
- Owner: [Name/Role]
- Deadline: Orders must be placed three months before the trade show event. Complete by October 7.
More Tips for Making Your Meetings a Success
In addition to including clear action items, there are other ways to ensure meetings are productive and keep your projects on track. Explore our top tips below.
1. Schedule Meetings with Smaller Groups
According to Neil Littell, Ph.D., PMP, associate professor and director of graduate project management programs at Ohio University, size is a key factor for effective meetings: "Large meetings should be avoided if at all possible. Perhaps break the project into several smaller groups with interrelated tasks and focus on meeting with those people first."
This best practice has two benefits: It's easier to stay on task with fewer participants, and smaller meetings can usually be scheduled for shorter amounts of time. As long as the lines of communication are open between groups, smaller meetings can help you avoid wasted time and off-topic discussions.
2. Develop a Project Dashboard
You can also set your meetings (and projects) up for success by building a dashboard all team members can reference. A dashboard serves as a roadmap, providing a central location for everyone to access project data, metrics, and timeline information. 3
Littell explains, "The activity of creating a dashboard for the project is a great way to dig into the project, what's going on, requirements, the schedule, budget, and other critical-to-success project parameters. To create the dashboard, the project manager will also be required to identify the critical issues and anticipate the issues that are about to be critical."
If all meeting attendees can reference the project dashboard, they are more likely to come to meetings prepared and aware of project progress and any risk factors. You'll spend less time recapping and getting people up to speed – and more time on high-priority agenda items.
"I recommend that the dashboard be concise, preferably just a one-page overview of the project and the critical information. Many times, these dashboards are sent to project stakeholders periodically," Littell said.
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3. Review Critical Tasks for Accountability
Once your project dashboard is in place, you'll be able to easily keep up with high-priority tasks and deadlines, plus have a quick way to reference late or incomplete work.
"The project manager should reach out to the people responsible for critical tasks, informing them that on the dashboard, they have tasks listed as being behind, and give them the opportunity to respond with their perspective and remediation plans. Once the project manager has identified the critical issues and [received] responses from the owners of the issues, the dashboard can be published back to the project stakeholders," Littell advises.
Accountability is a cornerstone of effective projects and status meetings, but building good working relationships with your team members is also essential. Littell said achieving this balance is essential. "The PM can ask questions such as, 'What are the results we are working to achieve?' If they are attempting to shame people into accomplishing their project tasks, they are likely sabotaging future relationships, respect, and trust from the people who have tasks that are behind. This pushes people out of 'thrive mode' and into 'survive mode,' which ultimately leads to burnout and greatly diminished innovation," he explains.
4. Gather Meeting Feedback
Of course, accountability goes both ways. Project managers have a responsibility to collect feedback about how their meetings run. Constructive, actionable feedback from stakeholders and team members is invaluable when planning meetings that are a good use of everyone's time.
Feedback should be collected regularly and anonymously through tools like online surveys. 4 This practice may allow you to improve productivity, streamline processes where needed, and address any communication gaps. You can also update your meeting agendas and action items accordingly.
5. Create a Functional Meeting Agenda Format
Agendas allow project managers to keep teams on track, ensure productive meetings, and accomplish project goals. You have a range of options for choosing an agenda type depending on the meeting type and project progress. LinkedIn breaks them into the following general categories: 5
- Informal:This type of agenda is a simple outline most often used for casual meetings like brainstorms or feedback sessions.
- Formal:Formal agendas are very detailed, organized documents with specific elements like objectives and scope. They are used most often for official or complex meetings.
- Action-oriented:This type is ideal when specific goals must be accomplished and the meeting is operational, tactical, or strategic.
- Discussion-based:These agendas are flexible and allow ample opportunities for team members to contribute. They are ideal for workshops, training, and team building.
Meeting agenda templates and referencing sample meeting agendas can be a good starting point. Still, creating agendas specific to each meeting is important rather than recycling past agendas with a few changes. No matter which agenda type you choose, Project Management Institute contributor and expert Dana Brownlee recommends including the following key components 6 in your status meeting agendas:
- Review of previous deliverables
- General status update
- Task leader updates
- Review of open issues
- Action item summary
- Debrief
Above all, it's important to keep meetings focused and streamlined by following your agenda to stay on task. Brownlee notes that effective status meetings offer extensive benefits, from boosting morale to uncovering risks.
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Faculty Spotlight
Neil Littell, Ph.D., PMP®
Associate Professor, Kraft Family Scholar, Director of Graduate Project Management Programs
Neil Littell is an associate professor, director of graduate project management programs, and Kraft Family Scholar at Ohio University's Russ College of Engineering and Technology. He is certified as a project management professional and a senior manufacturing specialist.
Littell is passionate about sharing his expertise as an effective project and program manager. His research interests are helping companies design, develop and deploy digital transformation projects and assisting them in defining their digital engineering strategy. Littell helps companies implement digital engineering solutions to develop products faster, with fewer resources and higher quality. He frequently works as a consultant on engineering data management and digital transformation projects for many companies, including some Fortune 100 companies.
Sources
- LeBlanc, L. A., & Nosik, M. R. Planning and Leading Effective Meetings. Behavior Analysis in Practice, 12 (3), 696-708. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6743516/ .
- Asana. Resources. How to create crystal clear action items. Retrieved from https://asana.com/resources/action-items .
- Indeed. Career Development. What are project dashboards? (With 6 Software Options). Retrieved from https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/project-dashboard .
- Sherpany. Resources. Meeting Management. Meeting feedback: Magnifying your success (or failure). Retrieved from https://www.sherpany.com/en/resources/meeting-management/meeting-feedback .
- LinkedIn. Advice: Organizing Meetings. What are the different types of meeting agendas, and how do you choose the most appropriate one for your purpose? Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/advice/0/what-different-types-meeting-agendas-how-choose .
- Brownlee, D. (2008). The secrets to running project status meetings that work! Paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2008—North America, Denver, CO. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute. Retrieved from https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/secrets-running-project-status-meetings-7009 .
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