If you’ve been invested with the role of Project Manager, you also probably have to set up project update meetings with your client.
*shivers*
Don’t let yourself be found unprepared.
If you really can’t escape setting meetings to share project status updates with your client, these are the 5 things you have to remember to prepare beforehand – so that you’ll get the whole thing done quickly and productively.
I mean really, why?
Meetings are widely regarded as a huge waste of time in the workplace. Employees hate them, and even managers who organize them would rather avoid seeing the clients to often, especially if the client has been difficult to work with.
Thankfully, email and communication tools allow exchanging status updates, communicate in real time, and send files and reports, saving the necessity of setting a meeting altogether.
However, there may be cases in which your client will want to meet with you to be updated on the progress of the project:
To make sure your status meeting is actually useful you have to be very well prepared before you even start.
Needless to say, you need to know what has been done and what has not.
A good manager knows how to monitor the progression of a project without watching the team members like a hawk (if you do, then there’s a big team management problem going on you may want to address).
Project management tools and time tracking tools alike offer several features that can help with that.
Project management tools like Asana or Basecamp allow managers to assign tasks and see if they’ve been completed or not. Features like comments on the tasks can help managers see the history of the task and if and why something has gone wrong.
Time tracking tools like Timeneye make sure you know how your team’s been allocating their time – and are essential if the project is billed by the hour, or has to be completed within an hourly budget.
Where did you leave things at in the last meeting with the client?
Make sure to bring any written report/email/agenda with the notes and to-dos of the previous meeting (if you don’t keep track of this, you should really start, otherwise you can end up in real trouble).
Prepare to update on the status of what was decided during the previous meeting. What was completed? What was not, and why?
Be precise to avoid important requests getting left behind, or misunderstandings (“No, but we said—” “No, but we decided…” “But no, you said…” and such.)
To conduct your meeting quickly and on point, have a complete list of all the work that’s been done to keep with you and share with the client.
For example, Timeneye allows you to download a list of the time entries registered for a project and export them to PDF – having such a file at hand will not only save you lots of time, but the client will appreciate the transparency.
You should be convinced by now that every meeting needs to have a clearly defined agenda.
Without it, you’ll risk that your meeting will go out of control and waste your time.
So take some time to outline a meeting agenda – and prepare to stick to it no matter what.
Now you’re prepared to face everything that may come up during the meeting.
Set up a date and time for your meeting and share them with your client. I’d suggest using Google Calendar so that everybody is synched and (hopefully) won’t forget about it.
If you synch Google Calendar with Timeneye, you’ll see the event pop out as a suggestion inside the tool to remind you.
Now that you’re all set, if you make good use of your time, you’ll end up making your meetings effective and productive!
Cover photo via Stocksnap.io
