The most important skill I learned managing a big project

At some point, I managed a team of software developers and requirement engineers in a big project, with many teams dependencies.

My days were mostly technical and managment meetings with half a dozen other teams. By far, the most appraisal I got was for taking good Minutes of Meetings (MoM).

MoM is the act of taking note of the points discussed during the meeting, describing agreements and assigning clear next steps, owners and dates for each action.

I dont follow any particular format, but if I am leading the meeting, I always opened outlook and started typing. This has three main effects:

First, it makes me talk slower. Although you may think going faster could be better, when you are discussing a concept with multiple people, you want everyone to have time to give input and internalize points of view. Additionally, summarizing the topics is a great exercise of refining the discussed points. You dont want to type everything that is said: only concise bullet points.

Second, it makes what is being discussed clear. Many times, while I typing, someone would will correct something I wrote. That is great, because now I understand better what they intended, and now it is very clear to everyone.

Third, typing the actions, assigning owners, and getting dates is a great way to ensure things gets done properly. By clearly defining the action, you make sure what you expect is what is done, and not something else they understood. By assigning a name, you put pressure and significance at completing the task. By having getting a formal agreement on a date by, you know when to follow up on the subject.

I had a great manager that taught this by example. MoM is a skill that takes practice. Each company and team will have different needs. In general, my meeting minutes would look lke this:

• Objective

  • I would write the meeting objective WHEN setting the meeting invite. This made sure people knew what the subject was.
  • If there was a particular issue to be solved, I would make sure to describe it here
  • If it was a more open ended discussion, I would type some starter topics I expected to be discussed

• Discussion

  • In the first minutes, I would describe the objective. If I had opinions or a proposal, I would already be typing while describing my proposal.
  • Then, as people started speaking, I would be taking notes under this discussion bullet point
    • I made sure to ident when it was under a relevant topic.
    • [Mauricio] In fact, I would put names under brackets if there were conflicting ideas or a particular feedback from someone that was important to know

• Next steps / Actions

  • As the discussion happen and actions come up, I make sure to jump to here and type any action
  • [Mauricio, date by: May 9th] I assign the name and date in the beginning of the action, to make it more visible
  • On following meetings on the same subject, I only copy the Next steps, leaving the discussion and objective in the chain of the email.

Even if you are not a manager or lead, I strongly recommend doing MoMs for all meetings you lead. I saw other teams not do this, and in consequence a lot of rework and late deliverables due to poor clarity and agreements.