The Daily Status Meeting

In most businesses we face IT issues on a daily basis, dealing with them in a timely, and effective manner is critical. I have found it extremely useful to meet with the IT staff each morning and review any of the issues currently open or, just recently closed in our tracking system.

We limit this meeting to just the critical service impacting events. Having this meeting early in the morning gives us a chance to get the necessary resources deployed to deal with the problem effectively. Including all of the IT disciplines is essential, make sure that there is a good discussion of the issue and review how process is being followed in updating tickets, and communicating with the users.This is perfect opportunity to drive the internal IT processes and get everyone on the same page.

Many of the things I do today have been gleaned from the morning meeting. Remember, we are always on the journey to better IT management, we however never arrive. Maintaining effective processes including incident and problem management is a continuous effort. When IT staff are not consistently directed they will fall back into old habits of poor documentation, and poor communication.

I also use this meeting to review any changes that went into production the previous day. This is the perfect time to check status on these items and it only takes a few minutes. A well run morning status meeting will typically take 15 to 30 minutes, certainly a small price to pay to know what is going in your IT environment.

This may seem overly simplistic, but you would be amazed at how many organizations do not do this simple task.