Friday, March 30, 2007

Quality goals in Minutes of the meeting document

After a meeting today, I shot off the minutes of the meeting as an email. The content was limited to the attendees, decisions made and subsequent tasks. I noticed my project manager creates the MoM as a Word document, places it in a folder for the project in a file server. I wonder what is the right approach.

Mine ensures that the notes are visible with no extra effort. The recipients can always search for it in their emails; Google Desktop would index it and the purpose of the minutes is served. Everyone is informed, and the information is available whenever needed.

What about the project manager's approach? The information is always there, but do people read it and comment about it? I doubt. This is probably the CMM/ISO kind of quality. Not my kind!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It definetely makes it easier to check the MOM info from a mail.

I guess the reason for having it as a doc in a file server is to group such MOMs in one place so that it is easier to search later and everything is available in one place (agreed that a search on mail subject would also achieve this). Also another reason could be that, sometimes people have the habit of storing official mails in local folders, so when there is a HDD crash or something, they are left with nothing and the file server copy could come handy in this case.

In any case, even if it is going to be a doc in a fileserver, creating a web page out of it and giving a link to it in a mail would be useful.

Sridhar said...

I think we can narrow down the question on whether the MoM content should be in an email or not.
- When it is in email, people read it. If you give just the link, there is less chance that people would click and read, considering the amount of emails everyone goes through nowadays.
- If your organization uses Outlook or Lotus Notes or IMAP mails, the mails are on the server too, so no worries on hard disk crash wiping out the mail.

The intention of sending an MoM, must be that everyone who needs to know should read the details. This intention is not obvious when storing it in a file server (and sending a link to it.)

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