• What was the original purpose of the meeting?  Are the objectives still being met?
• What was the original frequency and duration of the meeting?  Every day?  Twice a week?  Once a week? Two hours?  One hour?
• Are other meetings taking place with similar objectives?  Do those meetings have the same audience?
• Are the correct participants included in the distribution list?  Should names be added / deleted?
• Are the meeting outputs of value?  Are they being used by the intended audience?

If you can’t remember the original purpose of the meeting, then it is obvious the meeting should be cancelled.  The cancellation of a meeting is by no means an indication that it was not useful at one time.  As with any project, meeting objectives are constantly changing as you move through the project lifecycle.  Don’t continue to meet just for the sake of meeting. 

The same holds true for outputs.  If you are producing a time consuming output that is of no value to anyone, don’t continue to produce a deliverable just so that another item can be checked off your “to do” list. 

If the objectives are still being met, then evaluate meeting frequency.  Perhaps, you are meeting too often.  If the bulk of the work has been completed, and the meeting has evolved from the need to get individual updates on a large number of tasks to providing a brief overview of the last remaining tasks, shorten the meeting occurrence and duration.  For example, if you are spending two hours, two days a week to review detailed project tasks, and now there are only a few remaining tasks left, shorten the meeting to one day a week for an hour.  You and your teammates will be able to apply the three hours you just gained back into your schedule towards an aspect of the project that needs more attention. 

Also, don’t simply focus on the evaluation of individual meetings.  Take the time, once a week, to review all project meetings.  If there are meetings that appear to overlap in participants, objectives, and duration, ask if one or more of the meetings should be cancelled.  If two meetings are scheduled for an hour once a week and have similar objectives, but both are lasting only 30 minutes, determine if you can combine them into a weekly one hour meeting.  Ask if there is a topic or aspect of the project that has been overlooked, perhaps the purpose of the second meeting should shift to address something that has been overlooked or neglected (i.e., review of action items).  

Confirm Your Analysis

Finally, as with most aspects of a project, it should be a collaborative process.  Once you have completed evaluating the project meetings, seek out the opinion of the participants.  Based upon their feedback, determine what adjustments need to be made to individual meetings or to the overall meeting calendar.  This does not need to be an elaborate, formal process, but rather, it can be a brief discussion at the end of one of the regularly scheduled meetings.