Effective management of ONLINE Conference Calls and virtual meetings

 There are 2 important ways to manage online conference calls and effective handling of virtual meetings

1.  Organizing the call

2.  Leadership during the meetings

Important steps to note during the Organizing the calls:

1. Time management - Rehearse all important calls
2. Duration of the call based on the agenda and number of participants
3. Tasks split as micro activities for tasks and smaller audience
4. Issue resolution calls to identify dependencies and vendor involvements
5. Extend invitees to dependent resources on technical aspects
6. Subject:  Summarize on the call to address queries, clarifications and approval requests
7. Keep agenda crisp and state the urgency s needed
8. Outlook Repeats/ recurring invites not adding as issues
9. Bullet points on agenda for clarity to discuss and give background
10. Repeats should not be more than 7 weeks or 2 months
11. Invites can be extended and knowledge shared 
12. You should know your participants and customers management
13. Action items log appended in the minutes with ETAs (Expected time for action completion)
14. Keep watch on the silent spectators for their feedback
15. Know the features of the bridge line
16. Go on mute during noise behind you
17. Record the meetings with the permission of the participants
18. Disconnect single line of disturbance
19. Audible and clarity is important
20. Speak slowly, with right modulation, pause and listening to others

Importance of Leadership during online calls

1. Controlling of the call is important
2. Identify line ups of key stakeholders
3. Information to get from resources participating
4. In Project calls, round table to capture risks and constraints from all concerned
5. Repeat calls with continuous trackers, action items log for continuity and process
6. Time zones availability to be embedded in the invite itself
7. Conflict management is vital for leadership
8. Severing of the tasks, changes and need for managers to provide resources during on and out of business hours
9. Maintain harmony on calls with no blame game 
10. Provide correct information in calls and get info on the root cause analysis if needed
11. Identify management calls is in operations management and not project management
12. Buy in on due dates and expected time for delivery during the calls itself
13. Decision and discussion groups to be clearly identified
14. Trackers with percentage completion on the tasks needed for calls
15. Voice modulation to command authority
16. Handle the ice breaking filling the gaps
17. Give an opportunity for all people on the call to talk
18. Make sure bridge is not silent
19. Provide clarity and audibility to all is important
20. Set priorities, goals and action owners for tasks as a leader

The above principles of management of calls will bring in effective program management and also to address all issues, risks and concerns managed by the teams.   It is important both for the person organizing the call, moderating the call and leading the call to know these basic but mandatory principles of effective online call management

How to manage stakeholder issues

• Prepare a project plan with the technical teams
• Schedule the call with scope and tasks
• Pre-preparation for the call is important
• Confirmation with all technical teams and call in control during ownership conflict
• Technical resource non-responsiveness should be clearly handled 
• Tracking project status with slippages handled effectively by leaders
• Change window management - change not going as per plan 
• PM to facilitate to conclude on issues and PM decision watch on roll backs
• Checking point calls during changes is important

Project Manager efficiency is key during Calls -  Few Tips and Tricks

• Meeting invite should have proper audience, call details, agenda, key stakeholders and action items defined
• Customer requirements gathering calls should have organizers and bridge participants clearly defined
• Identify the issue or the problem that the customer is not happy about the project or progress of the program
• Scope creep - with additions or deletions of the CR Process
• Deliverables not in quality-  technical fixes to be identified
• Missed milestones and deliverables - how to bring them back to the track
• Red and Amber calls presentation to the customer diplomatically with offered solutions and back to green plans
• Customer non-responsiveness situation, leaders should try to have one on one discussion to get their inputs
• Escalations on team members - all criticisms to be handled privately
• Change outage windows extended or roll back needed- should be thoroughly communicated to the customer
• End customer or application owners approvals for Go/ No Go -  plan B preparedness to handle the same

It is very important that we follow these practices which are effective for having global programs and projects spread across various time zones, geographies and cultural background with multiple technologies spread across the world...