Bill McQueenEng Project Manager| NanometricsYork, North Yorkshire, United Kingdom
Hi,
I've worked on many projects in the past and had varying degrees of success when distributing and racking meeting minutes. The main methods used that I have been exposed to are:
Email minutes
Word minutes
Excel minutes.
And to track open issues, I have seen a number system and a date system to reference issue initiation.
What are other PMs using to distubute and track minutes. Does anyone have a recommended template?
Any comments greatly appreciated! Saving Changes...
A perfect approach to organize meetings is the combination Microsoft Outlook / Microsoft SharePoint. You easily can create a meeting workspace to implement a complete meeting life-cycle management:
Planning for the meeting:
Setting the meeting time and place using Outlook and / or SharePoint, inviting attendees, defining required and optional attendees, define the attendee role (Organizer, Attendee, Minute Taker), rescheduling notifications, tracking attendee responses, defining the agenda, collecting and providing materials that will be required during the meeting centrally managed with versioning, notifications and workflow.
Facilitating the meeting:
Verifying attendance, following the agenda, presenting materials, recording decisions, tracking action items that are identified.
Post-meeting follow-up:
Assure compliance (e.g. set some materials to read-only), creating and publishing post-meeting materials such as meeting minutes with custom fields, design and function, managing meeting minute approval workflow and action items workflow.
More informations, screens and templates you can download here:
I use comprehensive meeting minutes in Word. If it is a regular team meeting then the previous minutes and actions are reviewed at the next meeting. If they are a one-off type meeting I also capture the decisions and actions in a QDA register (See attached).
All the files are saved in a project directory that all the team has access to. I also keep a standard risk and issues log. Saving Changes...
Peter WrightProgramme Manager| BAE SystemsSouthport, Merseyside, United Kingdom
The main method I have always used is Word to capture the minutes and actions. The actions are then transferred to the central Meeting log. This ensures that when people are looking at an action from a meeting they can see other actions that may be related (or that they have forgotten!).
One thing people overlook is the numbering system for meeting minutes. Far too often I see people referencing meeting minute M1 and forget to give the detail for the specific meeting is was from.
Each meeting is given a unique name and number E.G. Tracking and Dist Meeting No 1 and this can be shortened to TDM1, as a minute is raised it would be numbered TDM1 - M001, that way each time there is a new meeting TDM2 - M001 the minutes will not be confused. This also aids filtering in Excel.
The practice of Saving, Linking and distributing has to be tailored to the companies IT capabilities and willingess to purchase shared filing systems, so in the worst case with disparate stakeholders on numerous systems it would have to be e-mailing an attachment (or faxing, - yes still exists).
Regarding Issues there are many trains of thought but as per my minutes example above, if there are many projects being managed if you only use I001 or IS001 you do not know what issue the project is from at first glance. You can use a project number in front P05542-I001 or abreviated project name Tracking and Distribution Project (TDP-IS001).
Better explained in my RAID Log attached. Note I did not include Meeting Minutes in this RAID as I woudl keep this in a separate log to reduce the risk of file corruption from different users etc. Saving Changes...
Andrew MakarProgram Manager| AMAKAR LLCOakland Township, Mi, United States
Meeting minutes are always an administrative task that no one really likes although it has value when decision are questioned. I'm a big fan of taking meeting minutes that add value to the project and also double as my meeting notes.
One approach that I've used to solve the administrative dilemma vs value add approach is to use mind maps to capture and distribute the notes. I currently use Mind Jet Mind Manager to capture the meeting minutes and distribute them to the team.
The product has a useful export to PDF feature and it has its own meeting minute template. I've written a lot on the subject of mind mapping as it relates to project management.
You might find some of these articles and other resources useful:
Carlos MedinaProject planner| GCC Permian LLCOdessa, Texas, United States
Sep 11, 2008 5:37 PM
Replying to Megan Smoot
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I use a couple methods to house documentation, including meeting minutes. One is on Sharepoint and the Other is a Shared/Network Drive. Currently I have minutes housed on our project team's sharepoint website and will send out an email once a week to interested parties (Project Team/Steering Committee/Sr. Mgmt./etc.) with a link back to the Sharepoint site. Hope that helps!
Hi Megan, can you tell me how do you use the sharepoint? as a Document vault or you create lists for action items? Can you please let me know which is your best practice.
Thanks in advance Saving Changes...
