Project status meetings

In my communication management plan, I identify the process to be used to report progress against activities and deliverables. It usually expresses the means of reporting as well as what progress should represent (for example, 50-75% for first draft, 80-85% for review, ...)

1. Engage the team in developing a progress reporting approach that addresses your control objectives and their need to not be distracted with administrative activities.

2. Consider use of tools such as Kanban Boards and information radiators to visualize and share project updates.

Kiron

Like everything else, it depends on what the meeting is to accomplish. I once had daily meetings for 6 months and wanted agendas drafted a week in advance. (A well organized WBS was huge help) The project had a lot of risk and low tolerance for issues. Those meetings were scripted to cover what success we had, what near-term items were up-coming and what longer items needed to discussion.

For most projects, status meetings should be driven by the need to communicate to stakeholders, especially if the stakeholder need to take some action. (Sometimes, status meetings frequency are written into a contract and you can't avoid them) Aside from those, the budget/schedule and performance meetings can be timed farther apart. But a good metric for a meeting success is that people come away with actions and NEW information.

On the question of tools, I used what I had available to me and got creative. We had Microsoft Sharepoint and I used it to reduce email thread/chain/webs, and had the Sharepoint site be a central location for group on-line discussions and contributions. THIS made it apparent to everyone when status meetings were really necessary.

Have the status continously visible in the project team room and have regular update on it by the team. In consequence, no need to discuss status in meetings. It is better to use the time to discuss risk mitigation actions and improvement needs with focus on agreed/ delivered results.

You need to prepare a plan for it. In such a plan, everybody know when, what and how must report and deliver the final brief progress report to the client based on his/her need and agreed format and time schedule.