Meeting Agendas and Notes

Maintaining clear meeting notes is a form of professionalism because it allows others to understand project decisions and progress.

Each team should maintain a single shared document containing meeting agendas and notes for the entire semester.

This document serves as a running record of project decisions, progress, open loops, and next steps. Teams should update it regularly and keep it available in their shared project folder.

Your instructors should be able to review your team’s meeting notes at any time during the semester. If meeting notes are missing, incomplete, or clearly not being maintained, the team may receive a zero for the corresponding milestone or professionalism.

Purpose

Meeting notes are not busy work. They are a project management tool.

Good meeting notes help teams:

• Track progress over time
• Record important decisions
• Identify open loops and risks
• Hold team members accountable for commitments
• Communicate with instructors and community partners
• Onboard new team members if responsibilities change

Meeting notes often become an important reference later in the semester when teams need to remember why a decision was made or when a task was assigned.

Organization

Use a single document throughout the semester.

Add the newest meeting to the top of the document and keep older meetings below it. This makes it easy for instructors, teammates, and community partners to quickly review recent activity.

What to Record

Meeting notes should provide enough information that someone who was not present can understand:

• What the team discussed
• What decisions were made
• What open loops remain
• What work needs to happen next
• Who is responsible for that work

Most meetings should include:

Meeting Information

Record the date, location or platform, and who attended.

Agenda

Before the meeting, identify the major topics, decisions, questions, or blockers that need attention.

Discussion Notes

Summarize important conversations, decisions, discoveries, and project updates. Focus on outcomes rather than producing a word-for-word transcript.

Next Steps

Document specific actions that will occur before the next meeting.

Good next steps are concrete, actionable, and assigned to an owner whenever appropriate.

Open Loops

When new uncertainties, risks, or unresolved questions are identified, record them in the meeting notes along with any planned follow-up actions.

Community Partner Meetings

Notes from meetings with community partners should be shared with the partner whenever appropriate.

Sharing meeting notes helps confirm that the team and community partner have a shared understanding of project goals, expectations, and next steps.

Quality Standard

Meeting notes should be concise, clear, and actionable.

A good test is to imagine that someone joins the project halfway through the semester. They should be able to review the meeting notes and quickly understand what the team has accomplished, what decisions were made, what open loops remain, and what work is planned next.