Developing a Great Meeting Agenda: A Project Manager’s Essential Tool for Leading Effective Meeting Discussions

Published On:

May 17, 2025

Developing a Great Meeting Agenda: A Project Manager's Essential Tool for Leading Effective Meeting Discussions

Reprinted from the PML Tribe Community Newsletter. Sign up here to get it weekly! https://bit.ly/PML-Tribe

A well-planned agenda is critical to holding an effective and productive project meeting.

According to Unleash Your Meeting Potential™, the definition of an agenda is “a sequenced list of discussion topics that is intended to guide a conversation between two or more people”.

Think of your agenda as your roadmap. It keeps your discussions focused, ensures key topics are covered, and helps you as a project manager to manage your meeting time effectively.

Do you create an agenda for every meeting? If not, you might be missing out on an essential and valuable tool that enhances your stakeholder engagement and meeting productivity.

Here’s why an agenda is essential:

It keeps everyone in the meeting on task.
It allows you to allocate time for each discussion point to keep the meeting moving.
It sets clear expectations on what needs to be discussed and what topics are in and out in scope.
It prioritizes critical topics first so that important decisions and next steps are defined before the end of the meeting.

Developing Your Meeting Agenda: What to Include

The items included in your agenda will vary based on the type of project meeting you’re holding. However the structure of your agenda should be standardized. A well-developed agenda includes:

The meeting logistics – this includes the details of your meeting (what’s it’s called, when it’s taking place, where it’s being held, etc.)
The opening – this is the beginning of your agenda that should incorporate a welcome to your meeting participants and context setting around what you hope to accomplish and how you plan to achieve it.
The main discussion – this is where the main discussion and dialogue take place and where your agenda topics are listed. This section is unique and specific to the needs of your meeting.
The closing – the end provides an opportunity to wrap up the discussion, summarize key points and decisions, and determine next steps.

Let’s review some tips for each key section of your agenda and how you can leverage these sections when managing your next meeting.

Opening the Meeting

When creating your your agenda, build in some time at the beginning to properly open the meeting to help set context, bring everyone on the same page, and gain alignment on the discussion. This should only take a few minutes but is an important way to start the conversation.

You can start strong by:

✅ Welcoming meeting participants and allow for introductions if necessary (this is especially important as you form a new project team).

✅ Provide high-level context setting for the meeting (remember, everyone is busy and this helps bring everyone into the right mindset for the discussion).

✅ Review the agenda together.

✅ Set any expectations for the discussion (regarding engagement, respectful behaviors, use of devices, building in breaks, etc.)

Main Discussion

When structuring the main discussion topics for your meeting, consider the number of topics to include based on the time scheduled, and the complexity of the agenda items.

You can set this up for success by:

✅ Defining whether each topic is meant for information-sharing, decision-making, or brainstorming.

✅ Prioritizing the agenda items to ensure your most critical topics are covered first. If you run out of time, you can then push out the remaining, less important items to another meeting, or send a follow up via email with updates.

✅ Assigning an owner to each agenda topic to lead that part of the discussion.

✅ Allocating time for each agenda topic to allow you to keep the meeting on track. If you go over your time, you can use your agenda as a tool to help wrap up the discussion.

✅ Scheduling breaks during long meetings (2.5 hours or longer) to allow a mental break, ability to check email, respond to urgent issues, etc.

Closing the Meeting

When building out your agenda, leave at least a few minutes at the end to wrap up and end each meeting with clarity.

Leave time for:

✅ Summarizing key takeaways, including decisions made, and risks and mitigating strategies identified.

✅ Reviewing action items and assigning owners with clear deadlines.

✅ Defining next steps, including any follow-up discussions needed, additional meetings to schedule, further analysis, etc.

When considering how you can use your agenda as an essential tool, here are a few additional important tips:

Keep your agenda visible.

Use it as a checklist to track your progress. Keep a copy in front of you or projected up on the screen for everyone to follow along. This way you can easily manage to the agenda and track the amount of time spent on each topic.

Use your agenda to keep discussions on track.

If the discussion starts to get off-track, you can use your agenda as a tool. Pause the discussion, refer back to the agenda, and gently redirect the conversation to the appropriate topic. Use a “parking lot” for off-topic ideas that require follow up.

Share the agenda in advance.

This helps everyone prepare in advance (especially if they own a discussion topic) and makes sure the right people are in the room.

Whether your meeting with your project team, your steering committee, your stakeholders, or your sponsor, you should always have an agenda prepared to support and guide the discussions. Remember, your agenda is your roadmap to having a smooth and successful discussion, and is an essential tool to consistently lead high-functioning, effective project meetings.

Book Recommendation:

Unleash Your Meeting Potential™

A Comprehensive Guide to Leading Effective Meetings

Project managers spend a significant amount of time planning, leading, and following up on meetings in order to move our projects along successfully. This guide provides a full meeting methodology with valuable insights on what to do before, during, and after every project meeting to get the most out of your key stakeholders.

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