successful project management - Commonwealth of Learning

surprising that project team meetings inevitably eat into their time. When you hold
project meetings it is essential that the time factor be taken into account. Experience
from projects that I have managed shows that members resent long meetings,
especially those where they sit like passengers. To begin with, they will already be
overburdened with other meetings, some of which will not be scheduled. They will be
attending three types of meetings: regular ones in their departments, the regular
ones for the project, and unplanned-for meetings called at short notice, which can be
referred to as ad hoc meetings. It is not unusual to hear people saying, “my life in this
organization is all about meetings”. Clearly, they are saying meetings are a waste of
time.
What it means to you as project manager is that calling a meeting stirs mixed
feelings in the team members. Let us agree that time is one of the most important
resources in an organization, and truly speaking it is horrifying how it is can be
wasted in meetings, especially if they are unproductive. It is important at the outset
for you to reflect on the time you spend on meetings every month. To do that, work
on the exercise.
??Activity
Give an estimate of the number of hours you spend attending each of the following
type of meetings in a month.
A.
Meeting type
Number of hours per month
Routine departmental meetings
Project specific meetings
Ad hoc meetings
Other meetings e.g. social welfare etc.
Total number of hours per month
B. What is the total number of working hours per month (excluding Saturdays and
Sundays)?
C. Express the number of hours you spend attending meetings as a percentage of
the overall number of hours you work per month.
Referring to the South African situation, Mulvey and Knowles (2004) have observed
that a business executive in South Africa spends between 30% and 60% of his/her
time in meetings. They also argue that statistics from America suggest that the
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