After - Do you create action items after a meeting?

The aim of most meetings should be to come up with next steps. These should be shared with the intended recipient, as well as CCing all other attendees.

It is a good idea to have a scribe who is drafting the action points during the meeting and assigning them directly to those responsible for completing the tasks. If it's not already clear who the scribe is, say "Who will be the scribe?" at the beginning of any meeting. And now in Microsoft Teams, when in a meeting, the scribe can use the Notes tab to add details and list follow-up tasks during the meeting.

The meeting organiser should allow time after the meeting to check the action points before their next meeting. This can seen as a summary page at the end of the meeting.

The scribe should also document the decision-making process by writing down each person's arguments. After everyone comments on the options, the notes can be reviewed as a group and often the best course of action is clear.

Common action items include:

• The outcomes from agenda points marked as “for decision”
• Off topics that require more discussion by subsets of the meeting’s attendees – aka a “parking lot”
• Ad hoc tasks that come up from brainstorming, usually sent as separate email tasks or created as PBIs in a backlog
• A date scheduled for the next meeting (if needed)