Decisions and Actions: A Project Manager's Meeting Notes

As a project manager, I suspect you’re in a fair number of meetings.

I hope those meetings are productive, and if they’re not, I’d love to help you change that!

But regardless, meetings are a communication tool—a means to an end for your project—which means you’ll need to come out of the meeting with something you can use to move your project forward. Typically, meeting notes are the asset that creates a connection between what happens in a meeting and what happens next on your project. So the meeting notes you take—or the meeting notes that are taken—are really important in making sure your meeting is worthwhile.

When I was first in a typical project manager role sitting in my first project meetings, I remember feeling unsure of what notes to write down. I wasn’t sure what I would need to remember, or what would be relevant to my role, so I erred on the side of writing down almost everything that transpired in the meeting. I wrote something close to meeting minutes.

I also remember how it felt as I got more comfortable with how meetings related to my role, and how I started to write down less, listening for just a few key things.

What did I listen for? Decisions and actions.

This is still all I write down during meetings today, and it’s what I recommend you focus on as well.

Why decisions?

Decisions made during a meeting typically change the conditions of the project, and need to influence the way deliverables develop after the meeting. They may need to be incorporated into project documentation, or in a smaller or more agile setting, perhaps just be communicated to the people impacted by them.

I don’t typically concern myself with noting all the alternatives that were considered but not chosen, and I would suggest that you only do so if there is a meaningful place to track these within your existing documentation system. Only track points that are likely to, or need to, have an impact after the meeting ends.

Why actions?

Actions are the tasks coming out of the meeting. In addition to getting decisions made, figuring out what needs to happen after the meeting is often the point of the meeting. What steps will be taken, and who will be responsible for each step?

It is good to verbally review all the actions in your notes as the meeting is ending and get acknowledgement that each person being assigned to each action is agreeing to be responsible for that action. Later, they won’t be surprised when you share your notes or enter these items as tasks in project management software.

Sharing your screen with your notes during a virtual meeting can also help ensure that everyone understands the takeaways from the meeting the same way you do—or has the opportunity to speak up if they disagree.

Why not more?

I quickly moved away from writing down more than decisions and actions during project meetings for one primary reason: the less time I spend writing notes, the more I’m freed to either facilitate, or at least participate in, the meeting.

As project managers, I believe we provide more value in meetings by facilitating them, or by asking great questions that steer them, than we do by writing down every point of discussion in the form of minutes. You know what purpose the meeting needs to achieve for your project, so you are the best person to steer the meeting toward those goals. A meeting that doesn’t achieve its goals but has a full set of notes is not very meaningful to a project.

Meeting minutes can be useful to a project, but they are less useful than a well-facilitated meeting, so if you must choose, choose to facilitate. But if another person in the room is able to take minutes, that’s great—your project can reap the benefits of thorough documentation. Or better yet…

Can AI take my meeting notes?

Short answer: quite possibly!

There are many AI tools available today that can take notes in your meetings—be that full word-for-word transcripts, organized summaries, or both. I have not yet used any of these tools myself, but I watched a great webinar the other night in which a few project leaders who do use AI to capture meeting notes demonstrated their approaches. If you have a PMI membership, I encourage you to check it out! It very much got me acquainted with what’s possible in mid-2024.

The webinar leaders also raised some good caveats: use these tools in accordance with your organization’s data and AI policies, and if your organization is not yet using a tool like this, develop a very intentional rollout plan using good change management principles. Just because you get excited about what these tools can do, doesn’t mean all you coworkers will be immediately comfortable with AI listening to all their meetings and recording all their words (and possibly their sentiment!).

But also, don’t let the need to jump through hoops stop you. Maybe you can’t use an AI tool tomorrow, but your organization could be well on its way to full adoption in 3-6 months.

An AI meeting notes tool might be the thing to capture minutes while you note decisions and actions, or maybe as you get a sense of its reliability and potential, you can lean on it to specifically track decisions and actions as well!

But even if AI one day frees you from writing any meeting notes, decisions and actions will still largely be what you’re driving the meeting toward as the facilitator. Whether you personally write them down or not, develop a laser-focus on arriving at the decisions and actions your project needs, so you can use these key pieces of information to keep your project moving forward.