In what type of meeting does the project manager meet with participants one on one?
Which of the following categories are part of the ROAM technique? Show
a. Restored, organized, accepted, and managed What are Bruce Tuckman's five stages of team development? What are Jay A. Conger's four steps to effective influencing? Consider the following scenario: Students also viewed(This post contains affiliate links. Read my full disclosure.) Meetings. Project management is full of them. We meet for so many reasons because project teams need to collaborate. In this guide to project meetings you’ll learn:
Working together to get things done often means spending time in the same room (physically or as a part of a virtual meeting) talking about tasks, making plans and taking action. It’s in everyone’s interest to make the different types of project meetings as effective as possible. In Collaboration Explained: Facilitation Skills for Software Project Leaders, Jean Tabaka defines 5 types of project meetings:
Given how important meetings are to projects (even if we hate them), it’s worth understanding how to get the best out of them. Tip for PMI exam takers: You can be examined on meetings management techniques! You’ll need to be confident that you know meeting best practices before you go into your exam. 1. Status meetingsStatus meetings are the opportunity to reflect and report on what is going on. Agile teams have the daily standup. In fact, you don’t need to be an agile team to have a daily update meeting. How to get the best out of a status meeting:
2. Planning meetingsA planning meeting takes a bit of facilitation. I prepare more for these kinds of sessions than I would a ‘normal’ status meeting. The kick off meeting is a good example of this. It’s an opportunity to set the tone for the project and make sure expectations are clear. How to get the best out of a planning meeting:
Implement some strategies for when there is no time to have meetings if you are struggling to get everyone in the same room. 3. Working sessionsThis type of meeting is where you meet with one or more people for the purpose of carrying out a task. Peer programming is a good example of this. You could be co-creating a document, working on a prototype, drafting a speech. Anything that needs multiple brains working on it could be done in a working session. Meetings where the main purpose is to train someone in how to do something also fall into this category. How to get the best out of a working session:
4. Retrospective meetingTabaka calls these ‘retrospection meeting’ and you might know them as post-implementation reviews or look back meetings. The purpose is to reflect on what worked, what didn’t and what you will do differently next time. It’s an opportunity for everyone to present their thoughts and opinions. If this sounds a bit too ‘agile’ for your team, then take a look at why an agile approach to meetings is worth investigating. You’ll be better for it. How to get the best out of a retrospective meeting:
There are easy ways to improve meeting minutes that will reduce the overhead of having to document what was discussed. 5. The meeting that shouldn’t have happenedThe amount of money wasted in unproductive meetings is astounding. The meeting that shouldn’t have happened is ironically the most relevant to project management. We should be all about making great use of everyone’s time, accurate resource planning and weeding out pointless, time-consuming activities. But that’s not how real-life works. Unfortunately, there are plenty of meetings I attend that don’t move my understanding or work forward at all. Meetings that shouldn’t have happened include anything that is better discussed in a different format e.g. one-to-one phone call. Meetings that repeat stuff you already know, or that are large groups of people coming together to update one person (project manager, I’m looking at you) are also an inefficient use of the team’s time overall. Yes, you need opportunities for everyone to share their progress and roadblocks, but the creeping death of updating someone ‘important’ typically means others in the room zone out and don’t listen anyway. You can probably think back over your own experience and come up with some examples of meetings that shouldn’t have happened. Here are some other examples of situations that would make a meeting not worth having.
If you can’t seem to stop this kind of meeting happening, check out the 4 sins of meetings and see if you can implement strategies to avoid them. In my projects, most meetings fall into the first two categories, although sitting down with someone to plan is also ‘work’ in my opinion. How to make meetings interestingTabaka has some interesting ideas to add to your meetings once the team is “ready for some diversity.” She suggests starting status meetings with a song to see who can guess the title and artist, or for each team member to bring in a joke. Her idea of creating a team theme is quite interesting but I can’t see it working in the UK – not in the industries I’ve worked in, anyway. Giving everyone names of fish and having ‘Molly Flukehausen’ give a status update would go down like a lead balloon over here, which just goes to show how culturally-specific team building exercises can be. I have my own preferred team building activities that work for virtual teams as well as in-person teams, like a scavenger hunt. Meetings might feel like a waste of time but…For a long time, I thought our departmental team meetings were a waste of time. Six of us would sit in a meeting room, and do the creeping death of reporting on what we had done that month. Given that we all sat near each other, socialized, ate lunch and spoke to each other during the day, none of what was discussed in that meeting was ‘news’. It didn’t feel like my boss was doing anything to make the meeting relevant to everyone. It took me a while to realize that it wasn’t what we were saying that was important in that context: it was the fact we had bothered to get together formally at all. It helped the quieter members of the team understand the wider picture; it allowed those under pressure an informal opportunity in a safe environment to vent steam about how things were going. As we didn’t work on the same projects, this was the only time we officially had in our diaries to be together as a team. In a way, the fact that I felt the meetings weren’t helpful to me personally was a sign of how well the team was working together. How to make meetings more effectiveIn order to avoid feeling the way I felt, Tabaka suggests that each team member: Must clearly see a benefit for being in the meeting versus remaining at her desk. Leaving the meeting, each participant must carry something back to her desk … that directly impacts her work. Without this clear ‘bridge’, participants see no need to be in a meeting or to actively listen and participate. Sometimes the bridge is a list of actions, a sense of direction or the output from a post-implementation review. Sometimes, the sense of belonging to a supportive team is enough. Another way to make meetings feel more productive is to learn how to run effective virtual meetings. You can do any type of project meeting online, so it’s helpful to build skills as a virtual facilitator as it’s definitely something you are going to be expected to do in your career. Templates for meetings The only thing that helps me get through some meetings is the fact I’ve got a bunch of templates that make meeting admin much easier. You can grab the bundle of meeting templates here. It includes an ebook, agenda template, checklists for before and after the meeting and lots of helpful notes on how to chair effectively and capture information in minutes. If you’re not into doing a lot of typing yourself, then meeting transcription software could be an option to save yourself a lot of time. You can read my review of the top meeting transcription tools to see if they would work for you. Action steps and further reading
Pin for later reading:Author, mentor Elizabeth Harrin is a Fellow of the Association for Project Management in the UK, a trainer, mentor and author. She helps managers juggle their projects and ditch the overwhelm, making tools and techniques work in the real world. Elizabeth is also the founder of the Project Management Rebels community, a teaching-led mentoring group for professionals. She's written several books for project managers including Managing Multiple Projects. In what type of meeting does the project manager meet with participants?All Hands Meeting
In these meetings, all employees, leaders, and appropriate stakeholders will discuss company-wide matters. A successful all-hands meeting will seek to accomplish the following four goals: Share business updates. Align the team around the company mission and strategy.
What meetings should a project manager attend?5 types of project management meetings. Project management kickoff meetings. A project kickoff meeting is the first step toward the alignment of project goals. ... . Project status meetings. Project status meetings keep the pace of the project. ... . Agile Scrum meetings. ... . Stakeholder meetings. ... . Project review meetings.. What are the three categories of project meetings?Project Kickoff Meeting. It is an event held at the beginning of some projects, designed to organize every step of the process, as well as to ensure every person involved understands the objectives, procedures and plans. ... . Project Status Meeting. ... . Stakeholders' Meeting.. What types of project team meetings are normally required?To enhance your meeting skills, learn how to navigate these five different types of project meetings.. Project Kickoff Meeting. ... . Project Status Meeting. ... . Stakeholder Meetings. ... . Change Control Meetings. ... . End Project Meetings.. |