Agenda Template - himss

Agenda Sizing Meetings (10 attendees or greater)
A team Lead or Chair is responsible for designing an agenda that provides at least 80%
value to its members. Crafting a well structured agenda is like lining the dominoes up to
fall toward success. Conduct a mental walk-through with these pointers and you are
well on your way.
1. Estimate the time needed to review previous business (at the beginning), to review action items
and conduct a Meeting Metric (at the end).
The time remaining is the real estate you have left for allocating agenda items.
2. Accumulate all candidate requests for the upcoming meetings.
Start with carryover items from the last meeting, then internal requests and external
requests. If their agenda item is not appropriate or applicable to your audience, provide
feedback immediately.
3. Conduct fact-finding on the requested items remaining to determine: the topic, who it applies
to, urgency, action needed (learn, feedback, decide, approve) and time requested.
After this is complete, evaluate which are the best candidates for upcoming meeting.
4. Start with the higher priority agenda items. Do a mental walk through (with its owner if
necessary) and evaluate if its action/decision/approval/feedback: 1) applies to 80% of the group
and 2) can be realistically completed. Time-Box it (give it a time allocation)
If either of these two conditions cannot be met, then the item should not be consuming
the entire audience’s meeting time. If it does qualify, envision how much time it might
take to bring the informing/discussion to an action or decision then time-box it
5. If an item applies to less than 80% of attendees, or is one-way learning, schedule it at the end
(after the Meeting Metric) and make it optional for those interested.
This eliminates the waste to those not needing the information having to endure it.
6. Negotiate with the owner of the agenda item: the time needed and material to present.
If they want 20 minutes, barter to see if they can condense it to 10 minutes (it requires
them to be more organized). If the item’s purpose is to ‘Inform’, consider scheduling it
as a 30 second announcement followed with Speaker Notes.
7. If it is unlikely the agenda item can be acted or decided on within the meeting: convert it to an
approval request for a smaller workgroup to evaluate offline, then return for approval or input.

Do not place an agenda item in jeopardy of not turning into a decision, action or
approval within its allocated time.
8. Encourage agenda items with the purpose ‘Learning’, ‘Feedback’ be communicated via email.
Sample Subject Line and Speaker Notes guidelines should be provided the item owner. Have
the communication submitted to you. If it is within the guidelines, then broadcast it to the
audience.
9. Consider leaving a buffer (5 to 10 minutes) for discussions to wrap up more complex agenda
items
If you don’t, you run the risk of short-changing the last agenda item or an agenda item
being left incomplete.
10. You don’t have to consume the entire meeting time scheduled.
If you only have 40 minutes of effective material to cover, consider giving the attendees
20 minutes back as a reward for being so efficient.
Courtesy of Duke Rohe (drohe@att.net)
HIMSS Management Engineering & Process Improvement (ME-PI) Community
http://www.himss.org/ASP/MEPI_Home.asp