Conducting Effective Project Meetings

Brad Egeland is an IT/project management consultant and author with over 25 years of software development, management and project management experience leading initiatives in manufacturing, government contracting, gaming and hospitality, retail operations, aviation and airline, pharmaceutical, start-ups, healthcare, higher education, not-for-profit, high-tech, engineering and general IT.

  Communications Management   Talent Management  

One of the most overlooked skills is the ability to conduct effective meeting-- and not have them be a drain on everyone’s time. You know how it goes, it’s 2:50 and you have a 3 p.m. conference call and you’re looking for anything you can come up with to avoid it, right? The problem is that most meetings are boring, only semi-productive and are often held for self-serving purposes of the person who called the meeting. And how many times have you sat down to a meeting only to find it’s a meeting about when to meet?!

Let’s look at seven simple rules to follow when setting up and conducting a meeting. Following these can help make the meeting more productive, more organized and more enjoyable for those attending. (And you won’t be labeled as the “boring meeting person” going forward!):

1. Send out a meeting agenda in advance via e-mail with any anticipated action items that you may need specific attendees to address. That way, no one is caught off guard when you call on them and people can come prepared to provide meaningful project updates. You don’t want to end up having an unproductive meeting and just need to call another meeting to get the information you really need.
2. Start and finish the meeting on time. Your attendance and participation level will be better if people know you have a reputation for …

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