Project meetings in project management play a crucial role throughout the project life cycle to ensure its success. Therefore, in this article, we’ll discuss 06 types of meetings in project management and their benefits.
Table of Contents
The Purpose of Project Meetings in Project management
Project meetings in project management play a crucial role throughout the project life cycle because they allow all the members to communicate, convene, and collaborate on shared objectives. However, every project meeting is unique, and being familiar with the different types of project management meetings will help you identify the goals, structure, and activities best suited for everyone. On the other hand, these meetings help project managers fulfill different purposes of their projects, and it can directly impact the increase in the chances of the project’s success.
Related Post: 8 reasons why team meetings are important for project collaboration
To run an effective team meeting, take the time to evaluate your needs and plan accordingly. So, let’s explore about 06 types of project meetings in project management.
06 Types of Project Meetings
As a project manager, you’re responsible for the address right members at the right time to conduct the project meetings. So, you should have a good knowledge of the different types of project meetings and their purpose. Accordingly, the following are the common types of meetings that play a crucial role in project collaboration and success.
Project Kickoff Meeting
The kickoff meeting is often considered the first meeting of the project. So, this meeting is the official beginning of the project and serves as a way to align the team’s understanding of the project goals and actual plans and procedures. A kickoff meeting occurs during the initiation phase of the project, and it is usually held by the project manager. The participation of senior management and key stakeholders is required to ensure alignment with project goals and secure buy-in. However, your team members are also the crucial attendees of your kickoff meeting.
As a project manager, you can use the following tips to organize an effective project kickoff meeting in project management.
- Hold this meeting timely and make time for team introduction. Introducing each team member is crucial because it will help them build an official relationship among themselves. So, sharing your name, title, and experience with the organizations is all you need.
- Share the project’s big picture with the participants because it helps them understand the nature of the project. On the other hand, this is also your opportunity to inspire the team with your vision and understanding of the project’s value.
- Highlight the project key details such as budget, due dates, estimated team size, and other information related to the project.
- Emphasize the next step of the project. Mainly include the planning process.
So, the kickoff meeting is the first significant meeting of the project. Therefore, project managers should have everything planned before the meeting.
Stakeholder Meeting
Stakeholder meetings let you draw from the expertise of stakeholders and maintain their support throughout the project life cycle. Furthermore, this meeting help you share critical project updates. Stakeholder engagement is essential for the project’s success because these meetings’ contributions are outlined and utilized. Furthermore, winning and sustaining the support of your stakeholders is vital for your project’s success. As a project manager, you can use the following tips to manage an effective stakeholder meeting.
- If you have many stakeholders to handle, focus the meeting on your project’s most influential stakeholders. Therefore, identify appropriate stakeholders for senior manager’s meetings from each group of your project. Other stakeholders can be informed using project management tools like email.
- Start this meeting with a short overall project status update of a few minutes because it will help everyone clearly understand the project’s current status.
- Stakeholder meetings provide the opportunity to engage with them effectively. Through that, you can seek out and listen to their feedback. As well as it helps you understand stakeholder’s challenges or problems. Then, you can respond accordingly and make necessary adjustments to resolve those challenges.
Read More: Why stakeholder management is important in project management
Typically, these meetings can be regular and recurring or just a one-off project meeting. However, the frequency will depend on why the stakeholders are involved in the project. Read More: Stakeholder management in project management
Status Updates
Project status updates meeting is a recurring meeting to discuss updates, progress, challenges, and the next steps of your project. So, this meeting helps project managers ensure their project’s success because it helps keep your project within the triple constraints. Furthermore, project managers can use project management software, like Asana or Monday.com, to generate a project status report, which helps you get everyone’s attention on the same page during the meeting. Moreover, you can use the following tips to conduct an effective project status meeting in project management.
- Review the project schedule because it helps you understand the impact of delays or opportunities presented by completing work ahead of the project schedule.
Read More: 7 importance of scheduling in project management
- Review the project budget because it helps you inform the team how much has been spent compared to the plan and its current status.
- Review the project scope because it helps you explain how much work is completed and helps emphasize significant project milestones to the team.
In addition to that, project status meetings help project managers discuss project risks and issues. These things should be continually assessed and discussed as part of the meeting. So, invite the appropriate members to raise problems, questions, and concerns to be managed. As well as give time to your team members to share their thoughts and comments about the project status because it helps understand their needs or requirements to keep a project moving toward success.
Change Control Meetings
Even if you have a well-structured plan for your project, it may face various challenges. That is the nature of it. Typically, a risk event may occur due to vendor delays, system failure, geographical changes, or something else. However, these changes need to be managed systematically. As a project manager, you may have the power to approve small change requests, but most change requests will need to be reviewed through governance meetings and processes.
As a project manager, you can use the following steps to handle an effective change control meeting.
- Provide an agenda – This will help attendees to understand which changes will be discussed.
- Discuss change assessments – Present your professional opinion on the change’s impact on the project.
- Make a change recommendation – Request the project sponsor for a related person to approve, reject, or comment on the change request.
- Plan next steps – Clearly explain how the change request decision will be communicated and outline how you will describe your project’s impact.
All Hands Meetings
All-hands meetings provide an opportunity throughout the project life cycle to gather, align, and drive transparency to keep your team engaged and discuss company-wide matters. This meeting involves leaders, appropriate stakeholders, and all employees. The following are the essential tips for conducting an effective all-hands meeting.
- Share the project progress updates
- Align the team around the organization’s mission and strategy
- Celebrate the team and project milestones
- Answer questions publicly
Project Review Meeting
A project review meeting ( Retrospective meeting) is the last meeting held before the end of the project. So, the following are the essential tips for conducting an effective project review meeting.
- At the end of the project (Closing phase), schedule this meeting with the team members within a few days of your project completion.
- Before the meetings start, clearly explain your expectations and the purpose of effective project meetings.
- Review the lessons learned register to understand what you should keep doing and areas of improvement.
- Don’t forget to celebrate. As a project manager, you should take the time to celebrate the project’s success.
Benefits of Project Meetings
Project meetings help to build professional relationships among project managers and team members. So, these meetings play a vital role throughout the project life cycle to complete your project successfully. However, project meetings could be productive or non-productive, which depends on the project manager and the participants involved. The following are some vital benefits of conducting effective project meetings.
- Project meetings are a great way to develop team alignment because they help ensure everyone is on the same page in your project.
- Project meetings in project management effectively help your team understand its goals, objectives, and responsibilities. On the other hand, this helps individual employees understand how they fit into the bigger picture of their project.
- Project meetings in project management help project managers build trust and rapport among project stakeholders.
- Project meetings in project management allow for information sharing and the flow of new ideas. It also helps to create space for feedback.
Conclusion
Project meetings in project management play a crucial role throughout the project life cycle to ensure its success. These meetings include project kickoff meetings, status update meetings, all-hands meetings, change control meetings, stakeholder meetings, and review meetings. These are the most vital project meetings in project management. In addition, agile scrum meetings, board meetings, brainstorming meetings, sprint planning meetings, and steering committee meetings can involved in the project meetings.
