Comments on: How I Take Meeting Notes and Facilitate the Discussion Without Driving Myself Crazy

By: Nivid Jain

Nivid Jain — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 06:34:54 +0000

Well,I use a mix of some processes mentioned above depending on the kind of meeting I am attending, but one thing I think worth mentioning is that ,when we use white boards for writing down d points, we take a picture with a cam or mobile phone, of that Board before erasing it for further discussion, after the meeting we share all the pictures, which helps everyone in meeting to recall whatever was discussed easily. Trust me this helps us save a lot of time.

By: Nick Glasspool

Nick Glasspool — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 19:46:13 +0000

The best process I’ve come across is having a colleague to record notes/issues/actions into a pre-formatted document (using a laptop) during the workshop. Then, using a screen projector, display the document back to the attendees, getting agreement on what has been decided. Then print off the document and get the attendees to sign the document BEFORE they leave the workshop. I’m not sure that every user I’ve come across would actually like to be recorded. It might intimidate some and shut them up. I don’t think I could ever go down the OneNote route

By: Durga

Durga — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 14:40:37 +0000

Brenda I was thinking of blogging on this topic for a long time now. I guess we all end up following same/similar techniques .Creating MOM’s not only helps up to record the key decisions but may even help us judging the scope of requirements.
Some techniques which I follow in addition to your:
I make it a point that I share the meeting notes with the client after the meeting .This helps ours (BA’s) to confirm our understanding and get a signoff from client.
I record all the meetings and see that every recording has meeting notes attached to it. Benefit of this is sometimes you don’t have time to go through the entire recording. Meeting notes come very handy at that time.

By: Charu

Charu — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:17:12 +0000

I have always used a combination of all the techniques discussed above depending on the number of people in the workshop, what facilities are available and how long the workshop is.
Recording with the permission of everyone is very good even if we do take minutes – it is easy to play it, simply listen and feel sure that all points have been captured.
Whiteboard can record key points but if I were using the whiteboard and interact closely with everyone, then I had to become the “full time” facilitator and it is always good to check if another junior BA is available to take detailed notes at those times. Or if one of the business team persons was available to ask questions and do some of the facilitation, then it is easy to take notes and participate as the add-on facilitator.
But recording is good to ensure that nothign has been missed.

By: David Snyder

David Snyder — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 20:15:46 +0000

I used to use a tape recorder but recently when I could not for one project I learnt how to take notes real-time. I create a word document of the minutes with the expected attendees and the topics based upon a template. As the meeting progresses I type into each item as much as I can. Then after the meeting either in the same room or back at my desk I will edit the minutes and send it to people from the project for their comments and updates before it goes out to the users.