Project Management Best Practice 4 – Team Calendar

Project complexity seems to increase exponentially with team size. Larger teams require greater division of work and additional managers and supervisors to oversee these disparate efforts. Subsequently, the number of meetings increases to coordinate and align efforts between work groups, communication with stakeholders, and gather requirements and ideas from the organization’s subject matter experts. Absent meeting coordination, team members and line organization sponsors and participants become increasingly double and triple booked; causing individual frustration and diminishing the team’s effectiveness credibility.[wcm_restrict plans=”41098, 25542, 25653″]

These situations need not occur. While no solution will eliminate all conflicts, a team calendar against which all important, sizable team meetings are scheduled can significantly reduce meeting stacking. Such calendars are best maintained by a central project authority, typically the project management office or PMO, because sub-team activities and available meeting spaces are visible to this group.

Principles for Creating and Maintaining an Effective Team Calendar

The following principles provide guidance to creating and maintaining an effective team calendar:

• a central authority having visibility to all team activities and meeting resources, such as rooms, conference phones, projectors, and easel charts maintains the team calendar
• electronic communication method for invitation and response tracking such as Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes is used

Note that the expectation for attendees to respond positively or negatively to all meeting invitations and send their response to the meeting coordination group should be established and reinforced.

• most frequently recurring meetings are scheduled first (i.e. daily, then weekly, then monthly, and so on)
• all non-impromptu meetings to be attended by three or more people are scheduled
• meeting invitations clearly indicate whose attendance is required and whose is optional
• meeting invitations specify if a representative can be sent to the meeting instead of the invitee
• team meeting coordinators are informed of all additional persons invited to a meeting by attendees so they can ensure adequate meeting space and that added attendees receive pre- and post meeting communications sent to participants
• meeting invitations are categorized according to project area or topic
• relative meeting importance is included within each invitation to help those experiencing conflicts to decide which sessions to attend

Note that a relative meeting importance scale should be developed by the team calendar coordinators. This scale should be broadly applicable to all sub-teams and be based on the meeting’s impact to the project’s overall outcome.

Final Thought…

What is the difference between a team calendar and the project schedule?

Project schedules coordinate team resources in the performance of work directly responsible for completing deliverables. Typically, routinely held management meetings, sub-team staff meetings, and worker prejob briefs as well as below task level workshops and unforeseen issue resolution meetings are not contained within the formal project schedule. All of these events, however, consume project resources. The team calendar serves to coordinate these below the project schedule level activities to ensure project and organizational resources are efficiently and effectively deployed.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember plans=”41098, 25542, 25653″]

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