The Roles of a Project Meeting

by Tara Duggan

Conducting a project meeting allows you to set expectations, communicate details, report on progress, or solve a problem. During a project meeting, team members contribute their opinions, expertise and advice based on their roles, playing a critical role in the successful outcome of the project. Successful project leaders create a responsibility matrix to define project roles at the meeting to keep it on track and running smoothly.

Project Manager

The project manager typically schedules meetings with team members, sponsors, stakeholders and other personnel. She plans, coordinates and introduces the agenda to ensure that time is well spent. This typically includes creating the meeting objectives, negotiating with attendees for a convenient meeting time and place, booking a venue or arranging for a virtual meeting, inviting participants and guests and arranging for meals if the meeting extends for several hours.


During the meeting, the scribe takes notes. This frees the project manager to focus on leading the discussion, resolving conflicts or keeping the participants on track. This might involve recording the meeting, taking notes online or making notes on a whiteboard and transcribing them later. Typically, the scribe uses an established template to record the meeting minutes. This usually includes details such as who attended the meeting, agenda topics covered, decisions made and action items assigned.


If the meeting includes resolving conflicts, brainstorming possibilities or conducting team-building exercises or training, assigning the role of facilitator to a participant or inviting an impartial outsider ensures that the meeting runs smoothly. The facilitator manages the activities so that everyone gets to participate fully.


Meeting participants contribute additional items to the agenda, speak up during discussions, present their status report and take on action items. They take responsibility for reading the meeting minutes, project plans and other communication related to the project meeting. They commit to coming to the meeting on time. They should also respect the contributions of others and participate without distractions of email, text messages and phone calls.

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