Page 292 - Project+

with meetings that aren’t necessary or meetings that could be combined with other

meetings. Having more than three or four status meetings per month is unwieldy.

Send out a meeting agenda a day or two before every meeting that describes the topics
you and others will address at the meeting. The agenda should state each topic for
discussion, the person who will present the topic, and a time frame for each topic.
What you report during these meetings depends on the complexity of the project and
the makeup of your stakeholder group. At a minimum, you’ll want to report on the
following items:

Overall project status

Schedule updates, including changes

Milestone achievements

Budget status

Change requests this period

Major issues that could impede progress of the project

Major risks

Action items

Meeting minutes should be taken during the meeting so that discussion items and any
decisions made are documented. Typically, the project manager hosts the status
meetings, and it’s difficult to host a meeting and take minutes at the same time. I

recommend having someone else on the team take the meeting minutes. Meeting
minutes should be distributed to the attendees within a day or two of the meeting and
a copy filed with the project documents.

Two other items that are documented and reported on during the status meeting are
issues and action items. Let’s look at the issues list next.

Issues List

Issues are items that arise that could impact the project, bring about a risk, or delay or

prevent the completion of deliverables. Issues should be captured in an issue log. The
common elements in an issue log include the following:

Identification number for tracking

Date the issue was recorded

Description of the issue

Name of the person who reported the issue

Name of the person who owns the issue and will follow through to resolution

Impact rating of the issue usually expressed as high-medium-low

292