Killing the Weekly Status Meeting

Don Wynes is an experienced project manager and professional services leader recognized for his ability to help new customer onboarding and similar implementation projects finish better, cheaper and sooner.

  Communications Management   Resource Management  

One of the most common--and commonly hated--traditions of project management is the weekly status meeting. The objective is sweetly innocent: Let’s all get together and share. And in a perfect world, that’s just how it would work. Here in the real world, the weekly status meeting is often seen as a black hole that sucks time, energy and enthusiasm out of the project team.

Ask yourself the hard question: Is your status meeting truly a benefit to your team members? If not, switch to a new approach that uses today’s communication tools (think Skype and YouTube) to give team members the freedom to choose when and how they participate, just as Netflix and DVRs give them a new way to manage their TV viewing.

Get asynchronous
Time-shifting a meeting is using technology and ingenuity to allow participants to come together asynchronously. This means I can choose to participate at the time and place that’s best for me, even if that’s a different time or place than anyone else. Time-shifted meetings let teams have deeper, more fruitful conversations by letting members communicate when they can give project issues their complete attention. This schedule flexibility also relieves a bit of frustration for busy folks, which is never a bad thing.

How to kill your status meeting in four easy steps

1. Break …

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.