Your company should have regular projects review meetings. This should include all the head project managers, production managers, installation managers, purchasing manager, tender manager, etc.

The aim of this meeting is so that everyone understands what is happening, how busy teams are, and what resources are committed or available. This shouldn’t go into too much detail of problems or issues unless the group is small.

Set a maximum time limit to each manager’s comments or report.

Should report on:

• Realistic projected completion date.
• Budget over runs or savings.
• Problems or issues that could be company/industry wide (e.g. jumps in steel prices, long lead time on booking cranes).
• What resources your project will soon need, or be releasing.

Minutes should be kept, but old notes should be updated, not left for a long time on the minutes list when they are irrelevant. PM’s who cannot attend a meeting should be encouraged to send in a brief report before the meeting so that it can be read out to all. It is important to set a start and finish time and that this is kept to. Everyone is busy and will more likely attend a meeting if they know the meeting times are reliable.

Don’t let this become a meeting that people want to avoid. It should be a time for the project managers to get an idea of what is happening in the company and in other projects and how these may affect their project.
It should not be a status meeting (something which will seem like a waste to most of the PM’s as they will just be waiting until it’s their turn to talk and not listen to the rest).
Any status type info could be briefly mentioned, but only focusing on things that may affect others (such as running over schedule, thereby using resources expected by others to be available).

A regular meeting like this is important. Emails sent around instead will not be read or will get pushed down a long list.

Tagged with: resources • review meeting • status

Filed under: Communication • Planning • Principal Posts

Welcome to My Project Management Lessons.

Here I will share with you some of the lessons I have learned in my time working in project management. It will be a collection of notes I have made in the past and will continue to include lessons as I learn them.

A bit of background.

I am qualified as a mechanical engineer and have since moved in to the project management field.

My project experience to date has been in the water industry (mostly municipal waste water design and construct projects) and more recently in rail (design management).

The purpose of this blog is to share some of the problems I have encountered, lessons I have learned, and solutions I have found. Some of these are from projects I have been involved in. Some have been in projects done by colleagues, and some have been in projects I have observed.

Not all the lessons I mention here will relate directly to every project, but my hope is that some of them will help you with some of your projects.

Filed under: Principal Posts