How to effectively manage project meetings

How to effectively manage project meetings

 

The meeting has become an important task for the project manager. It provides the means to exchange and share information and views. Project managers and team members spend a lot of time on project meetings. In the project environment, whether a meeting is an economic and effective way of management communication is often different because of the different communication skills of the Project Manager. The meeting takes a lot of time and effort, so it is only necessary to convene the meeting. However, many meetings are not very productive. They are not well prepared and there is no way to host them. Therefore, it is important to know what type of project meetings should be held, how many meetings should be held, and how to effectively host the project meetings.

Types and objectives of project meetings
The Project Manager may need to convene many different types of meetings. These meetings include project kickoff meetings, project plan meetings, project status/review meetings, and problem solving meetings. Each meeting needs to achieve a specific goal, so corresponding meeting content should be prepared. The following describes the objectives and content of each type of project meetings.
1. project kickoff meeting
Based on the source of the project, the project kickoff meeting can be divided into internal project kickoff meeting and external project kickoff meeting.
(1) internal project kickoff meeting refers to the project kickoff meeting held by the contractor's project manager after the contract is signed. Generally, internal project initiators (from the management layer), customer managers, project managers, and project team members participate.
The main objectives of the internal project kickoff meeting are:
* Define the project and its main team members;
* Enable team members to clarify their responsibilities and roles in the project;
* Briefly discuss the content of the project.
The main topics discussed at the internal project kickoff meeting are:
* Project overview;
* Scope of the project and deliverables;
* Overall project plan and project progress plan;
* Organization structure of the project;
* Project assumptions and risks;
* Project file storage/archiving requirements.
(2) An external project kickoff meeting is a project kickoff meeting attended by the contractor's project team and the customer's project team. Generally, the Project Manager of the contractor calls and hosts the project. After the meeting is started, the contractor's project team will prepare a detailed project plan.
The main purpose of the external project kickoff meeting is:
* Specify the expectations of both parties for the project;
* Determine the roles and responsibilities of customers and team members;
* Confirm the customer's project requirements again before entering the planning stage, and ensure that both parties have a consistent understanding of the project requirements;
* Introduce the contractor's team members to the customer for better cooperation in the project.
This meeting makes the customer a member of the project team, thus increasing the customer's commitment to the project. This is crucial to the success of the project.
At the external project kickoff meeting, the project manager introduced the following content to the customer:
* Project overview;
* Value of the project to the customer;
* Project scope and deliverables;
* Project Team;
* Project schedule;
* Project implementation method (risks and assumptions );
* Quality of the project;
* Conclusion.
2. Project Plan MEETING
A project meeting is a project meeting convened and chaired by the Project Manager and attended by project team members. The Project Manager determines the details of the project plan based on the project size and the importance of the project to the Organization.
The main purpose of the project planning meeting is:
* Prepare a detailed project plan;
* Project Task Assignment: assign a task to a specific team member. For each task, the owner and the expected completion date must be specified, and the owner must make a commitment in person;
* Give team members an overall understanding of the project.
The main content of the Project Plan meeting includes:
* Determine milestones based on WBS and further define project activities and tasks;
* Predict the duration of the completed activities and tasks, and assign the activities and tasks to the team members;
* Describes how to complete activities and tasks;
* Determine the relationship and sequence of activities and tasks, and develop the project progress plan according to the project schedule;
* Develop the project cost plan, project quality plan, project communication plan, risk control plan, and project procurement plan.
3. Project status/review meeting
Project status/review meetings are usually convened and chaired by the Project Manager. The participants generally include all or part of the project team members, customers, and senior project owners. Project status/review meetings should be held on a regular basis. For example, internal project status/review meetings can be held once a week. The project status/review meeting with the customer may be longer, for example, once a month or quarterly. This should be based on the project duration and contractual requirements.
The main objectives of the project status/review meeting are:
* Describes the progress of the project;
* Whether the project deviates from the schedule. If so, what measures should be taken;
* Describe the cause of the Schedule deviation and how to prevent the deviation in future work;
* Report the problems and potential problems found during project execution, how to solve the discovered problems, and how to prevent potential problems;
* Matters that should be noticed by the customer or project owner, for example, the customer may not have signed a certain document.
At the project status/review meeting, the topics to be discussed are:
* The work completed since the last meeting, clarifying the key project milestones that have been achieved;
* Project cost, progress, and scope:
** Progress: Compare the work completion status with the benchmark plan, and the work completion status must be up-to-date;
** Prediction: predict the project completion date and project completion cost based on the current progress and the project tasks to be completed, and compare them with the project objectives and benchmark plans;
** Difference: the difference between the actual project cost and progress and the benchmark plan may be positive. For example, if the plan is completed in advance, it may also be negative-if you fail to finish the plan or budget ahead on time, you need to identify the problems that cause negative differences.
* Corrective action: in some cases, corrective actions can be proposed at the project status/review to obtain approval from the customer's management, such as overtime authorization, so that the project can catch up with the progress. In other cases, the Project Manager requires a separate meeting to solve the problem and specifically discuss corrective measures.
4. Problem Solving meetings
When a project team member finds a problem or potential problem in the project, the project manager should follow the guidelines set up at the beginning of the project (depending on the problem size, possible impact on the project, etc) to determine whether to convene a problem solving meeting. If the meeting needs to be held, the project manager should decide who should attend the meeting. These problems should not be solved at the next project status/review meeting. Discovering and solving problems as soon as possible is critical to the success of the project.
The content of the Problem Solving meeting mainly involves a good solution to the problem.
The solution includes the following steps:
* Describes the problem;
* Identify and determine the cause of the problem;
* Find possible solutions;
* Evaluate the feasibility of each solution;
* Determine the best solution;
* Revise the project plan and pay attention to the impact of the solution on other areas of the project;
* Implement the solution;
* Determine whether the problem is resolved.
In addition to each meeting, the Project Manager can achieve the following goals:
* Provides opportunities to correct, update, and increase the knowledge of the project team, so as to develop more accurate cost and progress plans and performance status reports.
* Helps team members identify their/their personal efforts and make their/their personal efforts part of their project goals, learn how his/her personal success will increase the team's success.
* Increase the team members' commitment to the project. When a team member participates in decisions during a meeting, they are more likely to accept these decisions and work for them. People usually disagree with a decision, not because of the content of the decision, but because they are not consulted about the decision. In addition, Team decisions are more difficult to question than decisions made by individuals.
* The team cohesion is increased, so that people can feel the existence of the project team and work together as a team.
* Make the project team aware of the existence of the project leader role in managing the current project.
* In a specific environment, team members are provided with a presentation of their creativity in solving project problems.
Before holding a meeting, the project manager must define the meeting objectives, which should be specific, measurable, achievable, and result-oriented. The project manager should clarify the roles of all project team members in the meeting, and even rotate these roles so that each member has the opportunity to exercise and gain experience in hosting the meeting.

Frequency of project meetings
A reasonable balance should be maintained between the frequency of project meetings and their potential interests. The frequency of meetings is related to the project lifecycle. In the conceptual and feasibility phases, more planning meetings should be held to reach consensus on the final objectives and methods to achieve them in principle. At this stage, the customer's needs must be fully met. However, once the concept is finalized, the team members will carry out detailed design, implementation plan and product development, and the number of meetings will be reduced. However, the frequency of status/review meetings may increase when implementation plans, development products, and projects are approaching the final stage, as there are many things to be coordinated at this time. Generally, review meetings are beneficial to avoid excessive time and resources during project implementation and post-work.
Below are some practical guidelines for reducing the number of meetings.
Before convening a meeting, the project manager should answer the following questions:
* What are the main things (problems or opportunities) that require a meeting?
* What are the facts or assumptions that cause the problem? What are possible opportunities?
* What are potential alternatives? What are their costs and benefits?
* What kind of suggestions can be provided to users to solve their current problems?
* If a meeting is not convened, what is the possible result?
Answering the above questions may make you realize that there is no need to hold a meeting at all.

How to manage project meetings
Meeting management is an important management function. This includes planning, organization, guidance, and control. A well-managed meeting is an effective way to share information, clarify directions, and eliminate ambiguity. It is beneficial to coordinate the efforts of team members and obtain immediate feedback on Project issues, and provides a way to collectively solve project problems. The meeting host creates a proper team atmosphere by planning, hosting, and leading the meeting. He/she must specify expectations for the meeting. Based on the project objectives, the host must guide, clarify, control, summarize and evaluate the results of the meeting. If the host speaks too much at the meeting, the meeting may be inefficient. The impact of the host depends on the attendee's acceptance of his/her efforts to achieve the goals of the meeting and the skill and efficiency he/she helps the attendee to achieve these goals.
Meetings may be inefficient or totally time-consuming, especially when project managers make the following common mistakes:
* Too many or too few meetings are convened;
* Neglected the agenda of the distributed meeting before the meeting;
* Management personnel with decision-making powers were not invited;
* Unable to coordinate with persons who made major speeches at the meeting;
* Too much time is spent on trivial matters;
* Failed to assign activity tasks to specific personnel.
Whether a project meeting is successful depends on different factors. This includes the type of meeting (serious or free), the form of Meeting (formal or informal), the degree of advance planning, and the power level of the host's performance. The project manager must be aware of these factors and make appropriate use of these factors to effectively manage meetings.
The following provides some practical guidance on how to effectively manage meetings.
Well-planned and well-managed project meetings may be very productive. As will be discussed below, effective conference management takes place before, during, and after the meeting.
(1) before the meeting.
Based on the Q & A procedures discussed earlier, determine whether the meeting is required. If necessary, you must:
* Determine the meeting objectives. Separate the project progress or status review from the problem solving meeting;
* Set basic rules for meeting discussions;
* Determine who is to attend and only invite these personnel;
* Notify attendees of the objectives, locations, and time of the meeting as soon as possible;
* Distribute the meeting schedule in advance;
* List the items to be involved at the meeting and give speeches at the rehearsal;
* Start and end the meeting on time.
(2) during the meeting.
To make the meeting as short and productive as possible, the project manager should do the following:
* Set a specific time limit and stick to this time limit;
* At the beginning of the meeting, it is necessary to clarify the specific objectives of the meeting;
* Learn more about the situation from the participants (listen more );
* Make the meeting run according to the schedule to prevent the participants from "running the questions ";
* Use visual aids to explain your views and encourage other participants to follow suit;
* Summarize the discussion results on a regular basis on whether an agreement is reached or whether there are still differences;
* When further work is required, assign the work to the team members.
(3) after the meeting.
Of course, most of the work should be done out of the meeting. Therefore, it is necessary to track the work assigned by team members and distribute accurate meeting records, and use meeting records at the next meeting to check the work results.
The meeting records, especially the project plan, organization and evaluation meetings, should be retained. These records must be concise, clear, and specific. Meeting records can include the following:
* Time, place, and description of the next meeting;
* The time and place of the meeting, the list of participants and their roles in the project;
* Meeting Items discussed;
* An agreed decision and issues needing further research have been reached;
* Activities and persons responsible for tracking and reporting to the team at the next meeting.
According to U.S. statistics, a project manager has an average meeting time of about eight years in his life. In the project environment, time is usually very urgent, so it is important to use some special methods that can highlight the conference and make it fruitful. This can be achieved by ensuring that the host and attendees can play their roles well. The following are some suggestions that can make team meetings more productive:
* The role of the host is to set expectations, ensure that the team is focused on the topics of the meeting and avoid deviations from the topics, and encourage the active participation of team members. Participation will increase the acceptance and commitment of team members to the project.
* The role of the participants is to be prepared, show self-confidence and interest, and do not "Monopolize" the discussion during the speech.
* Humorous roles are active Conference atmosphere, which can be elevated and the team's moral level can be specified. Humor must be healthy, that is, do not be ironic or direct to any team member. Avoid the use of racial and gender-biased humor at any time. The humor in Chinese reader and American Reader's Digest is widely accepted by the masses for reference.
If you want to attend meetings convened by others, project managers and functional managers may not like such meetings. Undoubtedly, well-organized project meetings provide effective tools for project success. However, project managers may sometimes use phone calls to discuss with team members in private or hold short special meetings to solve some important issues.
The project manager must remember that a good project meeting is not the end point of communication. The project manager must enable team members to comply with his/her commitments by increasing his/her commitment to the results. The skills described in the table below may be used to motivate such commitments so that great meetings can be held, that is, meetings can make team members more effective and productive.

Main elements of great meetings
The goals of the G Goals meeting should be SMART: Specific (specific), measurable (measurable), achievable (achievable), results-oriented (result-oriented) and timely (punctual ).
R roles and rules: roles should be rotated between project team members so that everyone has the opportunity to show his/her leadership.
E expectations should be clearly defined.
A agendas agenda should be distributed in advance.
T time is money. Therefore, you must be sensitive to the Progress requirements of team members. The meeting should be short, meeting on time and closing the meeting.