While many action items arise naturally from the needs of a project during the project-planning phase, many action items arise later, during the performance of other action items. Perhaps while researching the market for a new product, your team finds out that it also must research markets x, y, and z.
You must develop a system where your team communicates with you regarding important issues that surface and then use this system as a farm for action items. One such system would be to have team members email issues as they come up.
A second system would involve a daily meeting in which issues were discussed and prioritized. The
method you will use will depend upon the size of your team.
There is actually a good deal of effort that goes into the project planning phase. Deanna Reynolds has uploaded a fantastic introductory lecture on the basics of project management.
The next step, once you have determined how you will gather action items is to create a spreadsheet using Excel. You can either use the template I have provided in the media gallery or you can create your own. The basic data entry points you will want in Excel include:
- Action Item Number
- Date Created
- Information about the Action Item
- Who the item has been assigned to
- Status of the action item
- Status date
Once you have created the spreadsheet, you can now use it as an action items register system.
Once you have gathered your list of action items and you have created the framework for your Excel register system, you are ready to enter this list into the spreadsheet for tracking. Start at the top of your list. Assign this action item a number. You can decide whether you would like a list prioritized from highest to lowest, or a random list with priority indicated in one of the columns. Enter the action item number onto your spreadsheet, and the date created.
Now, enter in information about the action item – give it a title, and a brief description. If there are any further comments you can enter them here, or in a separate “comments” column.
You will want to know who you have assigned the action item to, once it has been assigned. Enter the name of the responsible party into the appropriate column. You can sort by this column to
see at a glance who is responsible for which action items, and how many items have been assigned to a particular person before assigning further work.
Finally, you will want to track the status of the action item – is it in progress, completed or canceled – and the date this status was last guaranteed.