How to Book a Project Meeting

The meeting is a required method of getting project work done. The following guideline gives detailed suggestions when booking a project meeting. 

Choose Audience Carefully  Make sure all stakeholders are invited but not invite anyone who would not be able to contribute or make decisions. For stakeholders who only need to be informed, you can add them to the email group to receive the meeting minutes. The goal is to save people's time and ensure good meeting attendance. A viable test is to check if all invited attendees accept the meeting invitation with active participation. If not, reconsider your invitation plan. 

Book the Calendar Timely In general, we should book a meeting on the Calendar at lest one week beforethe meeting starts. If the session lasts more than 1 day, it is recommended to block the Calendar several weeks ahead. ​

Send Invitation with Details  Invitation should provide essential information related to the session, which generally includes: 

• Subject : <Project Name> <Meeting Name>
• Location - Conf room / Webex 
• Agenda - Discussion topics and objectives 
• Link to Project Information (or meeting background information if needed)
  • Project summary page (Quip / Wrike link)
  • Project email group
  • Slack channel​

It's essential to remember meetings are a high-cost activity. A productive meeting leads to concrete results like facilitating collaboration or decision-making. If we don't plan it well, we may have too many meetings, invite too many people who don't show up, who don't speak up, or many are multi-tasking during the session. We would also want to avoid meeting discussions that lead to no decisions, action, or consensus within the team.  ​

Reference 

1. Tammy Adams, Janet A. Means, Michael Spivey, The Project Meeting Facilitator: Facilitation Skills to Make the Most of Project Meetings, By  October, 2007

Question to Ask before Booking a Project Meeting 

• Why - Why are we having the meeting?
• What - What are the objectives that must be accomplished?
• Who - Who needs to contribute before and during the session?
• When - When does the meeting need to take place?
• How - How should the agenda be structured to accomplish the objectives?
• Where - Do we run meeting face-to-face or virtual? ​