vault backup: 2026-07-23 14:57:54
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# Meetings and Follow-up
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Duration: 30–40 minutes
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Duration: 30--40 minutes
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## Definition
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Run project meetings around decisions, blockers, ownership, and next actions.
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A project meeting is a coordination mechanism for decisions, blockers,
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alignment, and delivery. A meeting is not progress by itself.
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This lesson is part of the Project Management track and builds on the concepts learned in the previous lessons.
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**Follow-up** converts discussion into owned actions and decisions.
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## Simple Mental Model
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The goal is not to add project-management bureaucracy. The goal is to make the project easier to understand, predict, and manage.
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> **A useful project meeting changes something.**
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At the end you should know what was decided, who owns what, by when,
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what is blocked, and what needs escalation.
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## How It Works
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We will examine this concept through four levels:
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Do not automatically create a recurring meeting for every project.
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1. What the concept means.
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2. How a project owner should use it.
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3. How you should review or challenge it as the manager.
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4. How it should eventually appear in your project-management system.
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A useful review agenda:
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1. Outcome / health
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2. Last and next milestone
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3. Risks/blockers
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4. Scope changes
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5. Decisions required
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6. Actions, owners, dates
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Distinguish:
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**Decision:** We will use Option B.
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**Action:** Alex updates the architecture by Friday.
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Avoid "team to investigate." Give actions one owner and a date.
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Use asynchronous status for routine information. Use meetings when
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synchronous coordination adds value.
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## Example
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The exercises for this lesson should use real projects from your environment such as Umami, Mogador, QA automation, data governance, website/Product initiatives, or projects dependent on DevOps and Security.
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The objective is to move from theory to a repeatable management practice.
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A weekly 60-minute meeting with eight people mostly consists of everyone
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describing what they did. Replace the reporting portion asynchronously
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and use synchronous time for two blockers and one scope decision.
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## How It Fits Into the Bigger Picture
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The course builds progressively:
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- Project vs operations establishes what kind of work we are managing.
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- Outcomes and Definition of Done establish what success means.
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- Scope establishes the project's boundaries.
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- Milestones establish meaningful progress.
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- Dependencies, estimation, prioritization, capacity, risks, and health make delivery more predictable.
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- Status reporting, meetings, ownership, and portfolio management make the system scalable.
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- Closing and the final PM system turn the concepts into an operating method.
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Status reporting communicates project state. Meetings resolve what
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cannot efficiently be resolved asynchronously. \[\[Ownership and
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Delegation\]\] determines who follows through afterward.
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## My Company / Real-World Context
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Your team works across departmental projects, Product work, operational incidents, tickets, data, QA, SEO/WCAG, and dependencies on IT teams such as DevOps and Security.
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The lesson should therefore be applied to an environment where:
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- Project owners are usually members of your own team rather than dedicated PMs.
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- Operational work regularly interrupts project work.
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- Product and IT are important cross-functional partners.
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- You need portfolio-level visibility without personally maintaining every task.
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- Project owners should increasingly draft and maintain their own project plans while you validate, challenge, prioritize, and escalate.
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Cross-functional work with Product, DevOps, Security, IT, and vendors
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can create meeting overload. Your project owner should drive normal
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project follow-up. You join when your authority, escalation, or judgment
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is required.
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## CTO Perspective
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The leadership objective is to move progressively from personally coordinating work toward building a management system that produces reliable outcomes.
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The expected progression is:
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```text
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Contributor → manages tasks
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Project Owner → drives milestones and delivery
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Manager → manages projects, priorities, risks and escalation
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Technology Leader → manages portfolio, capacity, outcomes and organizational trade-offs
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```
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If every project requires you in every meeting, **you are the system**.
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A scalable leader designs ownership and information flow so their
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presence is needed only where it adds value.
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### Questions to Ask
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- What information do I need to make a management decision?
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- What should the project owner be responsible for maintaining?
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- What requires my intervention?
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- What can be standardized across every project?
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- Is the process helping delivery, or merely creating administration?
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- Does this require a meeting?
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- What decision must be made?
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- Who actually needs to attend?
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- What is blocked?
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- Who owns each action?
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- By when?
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- Can the owner follow this without me?
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## Meeting Scenario
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**Situation:**
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A project owner gives you an update, but the information does not make it clear whether the project will achieve its intended outcome.
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**Situation:** An owner includes you in a weekly execution meeting where
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most discussion is detailed implementation.
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**Possible response:**
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> Let's bring this back to the project plan. Show me where we are against the next meaningful checkpoint, what is at risk, and what decision or help you need from me.
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> I don't need to be in the detailed execution meeting unless there's a
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> decision, priority conflict, or escalation requiring me. Keep the
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> project status current and bring me in when one of those conditions
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> appears.
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## Key Takeaways
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- The purpose of project management is predictable delivery, not documentation for its own sake.
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- Project owners should own increasingly more of the planning and maintenance.
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- Your role is to challenge assumptions, establish priorities, remove/escalate blockers, and manage the portfolio.
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- Every concept learned should eventually contribute to one lightweight common project template.
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- The final system should make exceptions and problems visible without requiring you to inspect every task.
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- Meetings are tools, not evidence of progress.
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- Use synchronous time for decisions, blockers, and coordination.
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- Actions need owners and dates.
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- Capture decisions separately.
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- Prefer asynchronous status where possible.
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- Project owners should drive normal follow-up.
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## Related Concepts
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- [[Projects vs Operations]]
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- [[Project Outcome]]
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- [[Definition of Done]]
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- [[Scope]]
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- [[Milestone]]
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- [[Dependencies]]
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- [[Capacity]]
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- [[Risk]]
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- [[Project Health]]
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- [[Portfolio Management]]
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- \[\[Status Reporting\]\]
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- \[\[Ownership and Delegation\]\]
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- \[\[Decision Log\]\]
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- \[\[Project Health\]\]
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