How to run an EOS L10 project status meeting in Engage

What is EOS?

1. Vision: Developing a clear and compelling vision for the organization.
2. People: Getting the right people in the right seats and creating a healthy and functional team.
3. Data: Using data to measure progress and make informed decisions.
4. Issues: Identifying and addressing issues that may be hindering the organization's progress.
5. Processes: Developing and implementing core processes that support the organization's goals.
6. Traction: Focusing on execution and getting things done.

The EOS model is designed to be practical and easy to implement. It is often used by small and medium-sized businesses, but it can be applied to organizations of any size. The goal of EOS is to help organizations achieve their vision and reach their full potential by providing a framework for success.

What is an L10 meeting?

An L10 meeting is a weekly meeting lasts for 90 minutes and is designed to keep teams aligned and focused on the organization's goals. The "L" in L10 stands for "Level 10," which is a term used in EOS to describe a state of high productivity and effectiveness.

During an L10 meeting, the team follows a specific agenda that includes updates on key metrics, a review of the to-do list, a discussion of any issues or obstacles, and a plan for the upcoming week. The goal of the meeting is to ensure that everyone is on the same page, that progress is being made toward the organization's goals, and that any issues or obstacles are being addressed in a timely manner.

The L10 meeting is designed to be highly structured and efficient, with a focus on clear communication, accountability, and action. It is used by many organizations that follow the EOS management system, and it has been shown to be an effective way to keep teams aligned and moving forward.

Why should project managers use an L10 meeting to run client status meetings?

1. Clear agenda: The EOS L10 meeting has a clear and structured agenda that helps to keep the meeting focused and productive. 
2. Accountability: The EOS L10 meeting emphasizes accountability by assigning owners to each work item and setting expectations and deadlines. This can help to ensure that everyone is clear on their responsibilities and that work is being completed on time.
3. Communication: The EOS L10 meeting encourages open and honest communication. Effective communication is key to building trust and ensuring that the client's needs and expectations are being met.
4. Data-driven decision-making: The EOS L10 meeting emphasizes the use of data to measure progress and make informed decisions. This can be particularly helpful for client meetings, where data and metrics may be used to show progress or identify areas where improvement is needed.

How does Engage help you run an EOS L10 status meeting with clients?

Engage used inspiration from the EOS L10 meeting to design a system to help you facilitate your periodic status meeting with clients.  Based on research and industry best practices you should run a status meeting with clients each week or two.  These meetings should be at a fixed time each status period for 90 minutes.  The ideal size team that should run an Engage L10 status meeting is 2-8 people with special guests added as needed.

Engage provides a project portal that is easy to invite your team and client to collaborate together.  Engage provides a collaborative tool including a status meeting agenda and tools to facilitate the meeting with your team and clients. 

Here is the agenda of the Engage Level 10 project status meeting agenda.

1. Check-in (5 minutes): The meeting begins with a quick check-in where team members share something positive or interesting that happened in their personal or professional life.  This tool helps to build rapport and humanizes the people that are working together on this project.
2. Scorecard Review (5-10 minutes): The team reviews the scorecard, which is a set of metrics that measure the organization's progress toward its goals. Each metric is assigned an owner who provides an update on their progress.  Issues that need to be discussed are added to the issue list.
3. Goal Review (5 minutes): The team reviews the goals that were established for the project and each assigned owner for goals as asked to confirm if the goal is on track or off track.  If there are issues to discuss they are added to the issue list below.
4. Highlights (5 minutes): The team adds anything great that happened in the last period. This should be a quick headline and not a discussion. Drop it down to the Issues List for further discussion if necessary. 
5. Current To-Do List Review (5-10 minutes): The team reviews the to-do list, which is a list of action items that were agreed upon to be completed before the next meeting. Each item is assigned an owner who provides an update on their progress.
6. Work Review and Demo (30 minutes): The majority of the meeting is spent reviewing work and issues. During this step, the team reviews the work that was completed during this status period.  This can include demos and walkthroughs of the work.  The next step is to review the planned work for the next status period.  All of this is streamlined because Engage makes it easy to pull in the completed work items from systems like Jira, Asana, Trello, and others systems.  
7. Issues List (30 minutes):  The next step is reviewing the Issues List, which is a list of any obstacles or challenges that are preventing the project from achieving its goals. This process is also called Identify, Discuss, and Solve or IDS for short.  The team prioritizes the top 3 issues to IDS.  The top 3 issues are IDS-ed, and a plan is developed to address them. As the issues are discussed and action items are identified, they are added to the New Todo List and assigned an owner.  After the top 3 issues are reviewed, the team prioritizes the next top 3 issues and does the process over until there are 10 minutes remaining in the meeting.
8. Conclude (5-10 minutes): The meeting concludes with a quick review of 3 last agenda topics. It is critical to not skip the Conclude process. 
   1. New Todo Review (2-3 minutes): The team reviews the todos and assignments that came out of the work review and IDS as a team.  The todos are meant to be completed before the next status meeting and will be reviewed during the next status meeting as part of the Current To-Do List Review.  Each owner of the todo is asked to say "got it" to confirm that are committed to completing their todo before the next status meeting.
   2. Cascading Messages Review (2-3 minutes): The team reviews messages that need to be communicated to other teams or leaders who need to be made aware of a decision that was made.   Each owner of the todo is asked to say "got it" to confirm that are committed to communicating the message before the next status meeting.
   3. Rate The Meeting (3-5 minutes): Each person rates the meeting from 1 to 10, with 10 being a perfect meeting.  If it isn't a 10, they are asked to describe what would make it a 10.  This is a critical step in the process and it enables the team to measure how everyone felt about the value of the meeting and self-correct to make meetings more effective.  Capturing this rating also creates the ability for managers to see the trend of customer and team sentiment over time.  This metric is tracked on the scorecard and also rolled up to dashboards so managers can see when meeting satisfaction is low and make a data-driven decision to act as necessary.

The goal of the Engage L10 status meeting is to keep the team aligned and focused on the project's goals and to ensure that progress is being made toward those goals. By following a structured agenda and assigning owners to each item, the team can ensure that everyone is clear on their responsibilities and that work is being completed on time.

How does this all relate to a Project Scorecard?

The project scorecard, also known as the Agile Scorecard™, visualizes and enables managers, teams, and clients to see historical status reports and the metrics that were tracked each status.

Each column is a link to a status report.  The start and change columns are the goals the team is tracking metrics against.  It is easy to see when goals are being missed and trends that need to be addressed.  It's also easy to see what goals changed during projects.  The scorecard helps managers, teams, and clients visualize issues and address them before they become major issues.

Why is a Project Scorecard important for managing client expectations?

1. Provides visibility: A project scorecard provides visibility into the project's performance by highlighting key metrics and indicators. This helps team members to see how their individual contributions are impacting the project as a whole.
2. Facilitates decision-making: By tracking key metrics, a project scorecard helps team members to make data-driven decisions. It provides a common language and framework for discussing project performance, which can help to align the team and ensure that everyone is working toward the same goals.
3. Identifies areas for improvement: A project scorecard can help to identify areas where the project is underperforming or falling short of its targets. By highlighting these areas, the team can take action to address them and make improvements.
4. Demonstrates progress: A project scorecard helps to demonstrate progress and celebrate successes. By tracking key metrics and showing how they have improved over time, the team can see the impact of their hard work and stay motivated to continue making progress.

Why you should sign up for Engage today.

Adopting Engage offers features such as the EOS L10 meeting, project scorecard, and accountability tools that bring several benefits to a project manager. By using a clear and structured meeting agenda, project managers can improve the productivity of their team and keep everyone on track.

More importantly, Engage helps manage your client's expectations. By consolidating key metrics in to an easy to understand scorecard, you can have course correct before you have to have hard discussions.