Tips8: All Elements that Should be Included in the Agenda

As discussed in Preparing for a meeting, meeting agenda should include the following elements

• Name of Agenda

• How to proceed (a specific image of how the discussion will proceed)

• Purpose and background (why you want to discuss the agenda)

• Who to whom (who owns the agenda and with whom you want to discuss it)

• Time

These are the information necessary for the agenda owner to clarify what they want to discuss, but in addition to this, clarifying to what extent they want to discuss it will make the discussion easier.

Specifically, the following additional elements should be included.

• Desired state (the state you want to achieve after discussing the agenda)

• Result (the explicit output that is produced when the discussion is over)

• The means by which the participants will prove that they are satisfied with the completion of the agenda

The more each of these elements is clear in advance, the more efficient and effective the discussion will be. If any of these elements are difficult to describe by the agenda owner alone or difficult to understand by other team members, the facilitator's (accelerator's) role is to make them easier to understand and to organize the discussion so that these elements can be realized.