Overview
Regular team meetings help facilitate issue tracking and resolution, progress updates, risk management, and general team communications. Meeting schedules (number of meetings, frequency, composition) will vary by project, depending upon scope and complexity.
Details
There may be several different types of meetings, depending on the project, all usually set up and facilitated by the Project Manager.
Arguably the most important meeting of any project, the Project Kickoff meeting takes place only once (at least, once per major phase):
Topics to include in the kickoff meeting agenda:
- Project Goal
- Project Scope (in/out)
- Timeline
- Execution Method
- Project Team, Roles/Responsibilities
- Project Communications (internal)
- Issue Tracking
- Change Control
Other regular meetings held during the life of the project include the following:
- IT Internal — weekly. Should usually include QA.
- Project (aka "Core") Team — weekly. Should include IT and business.
- Business Owners/Project Management meeting — weekly or once every two weeks.
- Executive Steering/Sponsor meeting — once a month
Use best practices for meeting conduct: (1) prepare an agenda with specific objectives; (2) show up on time (or before meeting start time in order to start up web conferencing if it will be used) and insist that others do too; (3) stick to the agenda and steer away from solution detailed discussion in the meeting itself, unless it is a technical meeting; (4) stay objective and open to the opinions of all team members; (5) take good notes with action items and be sure the team agrees on the actions; (6) add action items, decisions, risks, and issues to the Project Tracker; (7) send out the notes and actions on email; (8) follow up on action items and issues as needed until they're closed. For more guidance on best practices for conducting meetings, see Practical Skills Toolkit — How to Facilitate a Meeting.
