Restoration Project Management - Project Planning and Management for Ecological Restoration - page 28

Productive meetings of any type involve the following elements:
1. Create an agenda.
2. Record the action items.
3. Identify the person or persons responsible for each task with a due date.
4. Record all decisions.
5. Document items for future discussion (we refer to these as “parking lot items”)—issues
that come up during a meeting that are not relevant to the current agenda items but will
be important to take up at another time (Hindle 1998).
6. Assign a facilitator. For typical meetings, this can be handled by the project manager or
another designated person.
A facilitator can aid hugely in obtaining needed information and providing guidance for heavily
attended meetings or ones for which complex issues are anticipated. Also, keep in mind that meet-
ing minutes do not have to be elaborate or long. In fact, the more succinct the writing, the easier
it will be to keep track of the tasks that have been assigned.