10 Tips for Good Minutes

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Minutes help with project communication – they ensure people have a common understanding of what the meeting was about, and they serve as a permanent record. They can be especially useful for people who were not able to attend the meeting in person. So here are 10 tips for writing good minutes.

1. Write minutes while you still remember

Don’t leave writing up your minutes until the project meeting is a distant memory. If you can’t remember everything, get someone else to read your minutes and clarify any points before you send out your final version. Even better, get someone else to take notes, and then compare your version with their version to produce the final version.

2. Start with an action review

Whether or not you reviewed the actions from last time at the beginning of the meeting, put them at the beginning of the minutes. Write down all the actions from the last meeting and a summary of progress against them. If the action was completed, don’t bother to write it out again. Instead, add a line that says ‘all other actions were completed or are no longer relevant’.

3. Document actions and owners

During the meeting, write down the actions and who will do them. In the minutes, include these actions in the flow of the text. You can also include an action summary at the end of the minutes. Tabular format works well for this.

4. Record who was there

You will have included the names of attendees on the calendar invite and also the agenda, but who actually turns up to the meeting could well be different!

5. Include images

If you use flip charts or mind mapping software in the meeting, include links to the documents, screenshots or embedded files. You can take photos of what you wrote on flip charts with a phone camera – the resolution will be good enough to include in the minutes.

6. Use a standard template

If your company does not have a standard template for minutes, make one up, or ask your PMO. Using a standard template saves you time. Your attendees will also get used to reading the minutes in that format, especially if the meeting is held regularly.

7. Document decisions

Use your minutes to confirm the decisions that were taken in the meeting. Make a note of any project change requests that were approved or rejected.

8. Use tables

A tabular format works well for minutes. Use 3 columns: item number, discussion summary and action owner. Then people can scan down the right-hand column for their initials to see what actions they picked up. This format works well if your minutes record lots of actions. If the meeting is mainly discussion with few actions, this column then looks bear. Choose a format that works for you.

9. Send minutes out quickly

Ideally, you should send minutes out within the week. Sooner is better. And they should definitely be circulated before the next meeting! Send them to people who weren’t able to attend as well, so they can see what they missed.

10. Have minutes!

The project needs a record of what was discussed, so you should record the meeting. It’s OK not to have minutes for informal meetings, but most meetings will benefit from having a written record.

What other tips do you have for meeting minutes?

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Tagged as: minutes, project communications, project team minutes

9/07/2012
  • BarryHodge

    A senior manager gave me a tip which I have always used; dawn until dusk. This means on the day the meeting takes place write up the minutes and send out before it gets dark. Although this can be diffcult to achieve in winter for meetings that take place late in the day!

    • http://www.otobosgroup.com Elizabeth

      Barry, this is a great tip. I just wish I had the discipline to follow it more! At the rate I’m going at the moment it sometimes takes up to a week to get the notes out after a meeting – and I’m not proud of that.

  • Dave Fletcher

    Use a “management tool” rather than writing things in a minutes document. Particularly for 2 & 3 an Action item log or an issues log will be easier to see the bigger picture, review for lessons learned and, be accessed by any team member, and designed to roll up a dashboard for status reporting.

    • http://www.otobosgroup.com Elizabeth

      Dave, good point. I have written before about using action and issue logs, but when you need to record the narrative discussion of a meeting, these tools can’t replace minutes which often give you a lot more detail about the context of what was said. Still, I wouldn’t be without my action and issue logs, and when my project faced an audit recently I was able to use them to demonstrate how everything was recorded in one place.

    • http://www.helptrainingcourses.com/ Natalie

       Really like the idea Dave. We’ve recently implemented a ‘traffic light’ system in our ongoing task reviews for monthly meetings. If a task is yet to be started, we code it red. For those that need more work but are in motion, amber, and for those that are complete they’re green.

  • Glen Alleman

    Elizabeth,
    Here’s how we handle this http://herdingcats.typepad.com/my_weblog/2012/07/plan-of-the-day.html

    • http://www.otobosgroup.com Elizabeth

      Thanks Glen. I’ve commented on your blog about how we share upcoming milestones. I confess that the type of minutes I’ve described here is more suited to project board meetings or get-all-the-issues-out-and-make-a-decision meetings than structured status reporting as you describe.

  • http://cobaltpm.com/ Ben Ferris

    Great post, Elizabeth.  I know that I am guilty of #1 (Write minutes while you still remember) because it seems I am always off to the next meeting or task before I get a chance to finalize the meeting minutes.  In the past I have used a voice recorder with some clients and then transcribed the notes / minutes later — but that can often freak people out when they know whatever they say is being recorded.  It is often best to have a dedicated note taker who you can trust in the meeting.

    • http://www.otobosgroup.com Elizabeth

      Ben, sounds like you and me both need to take Barry’s advice below! I like the idea of taking a voice recorder into meetings and having the audio transcribed but you’d need to edit it too as people do waffle on and not speak in full sentences which makes transcripts hard to read. That is, if you can get the meeting participants to allow you to record them in the first place…

  • http://twitter.com/LarsAC Lars von Wedel

    Great summary, thanks a lot.

    Recently came across the proposal, to agree among the project team (e.g. during kick off), when minutes should have been sent (e.g. within two days after the meeting). Agreeing on your 10 items would be useful, too !

    • http://www.otobosgroup.com Elizabeth

      Good idea! Thanks for tweeting this post, too.

  • http://pmpeople.wordpress.com/ Ross Andren

    My tips:

    1) Actions that result in significant work should be transferred to your WBS and schedule. Otherwise you end up running a project in two places…risky.

    2) Chase up actions on the agreed dates, not just the next meeting. Otherwise you can run into the ‘everlasting action’ syndrome – “Sorry..I missed that one, but I’ll have it done tomorrow”…a week goes by…..’Sorry, I forgot that, I’ll have it complete this afternoon”….a week goes by…etc.

    • http://www.otobosgroup.com Elizabeth

      Ross, excellent point about the dates. I have to confess to having several actions being carried forward each time because people forget about them until they are reminded of their commitment at the next meeting. Chasing up before the meeting means at least they have a chance to scrabble round and complete it before being asked in the meeting.

  • Jeffrey Steinke

    Elizabeth, et al, I’m curious how many people are aware that there are new web apps out there that automatically do almost all of these steps for you?

    Dave mentions “management” tools but there are also tools that are specifically meant to help you run better meetings, make it easier to capture minutes, and track the to-dos from the mtg.

    • http://www.otobosgroup.com Elizabeth

      I wasn’t aware of any until I looked into your company, Jeffrey, but dragging me away from pen and paper to an app is a challenge no one (or piece of software) has succeeded in achieving yet!

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