Projects and operations
Template: minutes from a status meeting
A short minute template for status meetings, built to keep the meeting to twenty minutes. With a fixed place to put matters that concern only two of the participants.
MINUTES: STATUS MEETING [team or area], week [__]
[date], [__.__]–[__.__] | [place or meeting format]
PRESENT
[Name, name, name] (or: the whole team, [number] people)
STATUS
[Everything is on plan, with these exceptions:]
- [What is stuck, and what is blocking it]
DECISIONS
1. [What was decided]
TASKS
- [ ] [Name]: [task] — due [date]
- [ ] [Name]: [task] — due [date]
TAKEN OUTSIDE THE MEETING
- [Matter]: [name] and [name] take it directly.
NEXT MEETING
[date, time]How to use it
- Write the exceptions, not the status. “Everything is on plan, with one exception” is a complete status report. The list of everything going well is one nobody reads.
- Use “taken outside the meeting” actively. A status meeting always derails on something that concerns two of the seven. A fixed place to put that is the difference between twenty minutes and forty.
- Do not write background. If a matter needs explaining, it belongs in a different meeting.
When the status meeting should be cancelled
If the minutes three weeks running contain only “everything is on plan”, the meeting no longer has a function. Then written status is enough, and the meeting time can go to something else.
Frequently asked questions
A few lines. A status meeting that produces a page of minutes has really been a working meeting, and then it should be called one.
Preferably not. The round-the-table is the most expensive form of information transfer there is. Ask for written status before the meeting, and spend the meeting on what is unclear or stuck.
Put them in a fixed item called «taken outside the meeting», with the name of who will take it. Then the meeting keeps to time without the matter disappearing.