Last updated: April 28, 2006

Meeting Minutes

Purpose

The purpose of preparing meeting minutes is to document the discussions, issues, decisions, and action items from each meeting. This information is then communicated to the appropriate participants and interested parties.  A well written set of minutes should allow someone in the future to determine what took place in the meeting.

Process

Meeting minutes are to be prepared for each formal project meeting held during the semester.  Formal project meetings include the weekly project status meetings and meetings held with the customer.  It is up to each team as to whether or not meeting minutes are prepared for the team's working meetings.

The recommended process for documenting a meeting is to start each meeting by posting or discussing the agenda. The team’s recorder should also keep a record of items discussed using the following headings: (1) Discussions, (2) Issues, (3) Decisions & Outcomes, and (4) Action Items. At the end of the meeting the recorder is expected to read the items logged in each of these categories. The meeting participants will review these items for completeness and decide the communication implications of each, including what needs to be communicated, to whom, when, and how.

Meeting minutes are to be posted to the team web site and distributed electronically to all participants by the beginning of the day immediately following the meeting.  Electronic distribution of the minutes should place the minutes in the text body of the e-mail message rather than including it as a Word document or HTML attachment. This generally saves several steps for each person wanting to read the minutes.

Content

The following items should appear in the minutes distributed following a formal project meeting.

• Meeting type / description
• Date, time and location of meeting
• Attendees (list who was actually present)
• Recorder (identifies who wrote the minutes)
• Summary of items discussed in the meeting (generally following the outline provided by the meeting agenda)
• Issues raised (identifies owner and expected resolution date)
• Decisions & Outcomes (documents essential information about each decision)
• Action items assigned (identifies owner and expected completion date)