Projects and operations
Template: minutes from a project meeting
A ready-made minute template for project meetings, with status against plan, risk, decisions and tasks with owner and deadline. Copy and use.
MINUTES: PROJECT MEETING [project name]
[date], [__.__]–[__.__] | [place or meeting format]
Meeting no. [__]
PRESENT
[Name], [role]
[Name], [role]
Absent: [Name]
STATUS AGAINST PLAN
[One to three sentences. Deviations first, what is on plan last.]
Milestone Planned Now Status
[milestone] [date] [date] [on track / delayed]
[milestone] [date] [date] [on track / delayed]
DECISIONS
1. [What was decided, in one sentence somebody can act on]
2. [...]
TASKS
| # | Task | Owner | Due |
|---|------|-------|-----|
| 1 | | | |
| 2 | | | |
RISKS CHANGED SINCE LAST TIME
- [Risk]: [new, worse or closed]. Measure: [what], owner [name].
DEFERRED
- [Matter], to [meeting or date], because [reason]
BACKGROUND
[Only where a decision needs explaining. Two to five sentences:
which alternatives were considered, and what was decisive.]
NEXT MEETING
[date, time]
Minutes taken by: [name]How to use it
- Put status before you write anything else. If the project is delayed, that belongs in the first sentence, not in paragraph four.
- Write only risks that have changed. A list repeated unchanged every week is one people stop reading, and then the one change that mattered disappears too.
- Give tasks names, not roles. “The development team is looking at it” is an address nobody lives at.
- Keep the milestone table between meetings. It shows drift over time, which is something quite different from status today.
The background field is what you miss six months later
The decision is in the minutes anyway. What disappears is why. When the matter comes up again in November and somebody asks why you did not choose alternative B, two sentences written in August are worth more than an hour of digging through old threads.
Frequently asked questions
Status against plan, deviations, decisions, tasks with owner and deadline, and risks that have changed since last time. The discussion itself goes in only where it explains why a decision came out the way it did.
Half a page is enough for an ordinary weekly meeting. If the minutes get longer than the agenda, they render too much of the conversation and too little of the decisions.
Yes, but only what has changed. A risk list repeated unchanged every week is one people stop reading. Write what is new, worse or closed.