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SessionOne041

Changing the Project Status Meeting
SharonMarshRoberts and SteveSmith

Far too often, the members of a project team work in isolation and then silently suffer through weekly status meetings. Too often these meetings reflect the interests of the sponsor and glories unseen from the trenches. If you measured the new ideas gained versus time lost in these meetings, a vast number of people would rate the meeting as a waste of time.

But meeting planners have become "stuck" in a do-and-then-report paradigm, where the doing occupies a certain time and the reporting occupies a different time. Attendance is required; meetings are scheduled for fixed times and places. Perhaps the meeting sponsor basks in the glory of the sequential attentions of n persons and rates the meeting as excellent.

Sharon and Steve have seen this pattern in company after company. They want to help equip the people with tools for changing how project's are built and statused. Join Sharon and Steve to experience a traditional status meeting, discover alternate ways to meet and to affect project status.

Learning Objectives
- Experience a hierarchical task structure leading to a traditional meeting, versus a less traditional task structure culminating in a non-traditional meeting.
- Explore measures of personal and group value for the experience.
- Allow individuals to develop alternatives for at least one component of the traditional status meeting.
- Explore measures of satisfaction by participants versus observers in the meeting.