Estimate the time needed for each agenda topic
Estimating the time needed for each topic is just like budgeting your spending. It's a planning tool, and it helps you see if there's enough time to cover every topic on the agenda.
Why should you estimate how long a topic will take?
Most meetings don't finish on time. There's a few reasons for why this happens, but the most common one is a long agenda. If the agenda doesn't fit in the meeting's allotted time, then you'll be forced to run the meeting over time, skip topics, or rush through topics.
The easiest way to avoid this outcome is to estimate how much time each topic needs as you create your agenda. This gives you a rough idea of how long your meeting will take. For example, if your agenda has 6 topics, and each topic needs 15 minutes of discussion, you won't be able to go through all your topics in an hour long meeting. If you realize this before the meeting, it gives you a chance to go back and revise your agenda.
Time estimates are primarily a planning tool, but you can also use them during the meeting to keep the meeting moving. Once the time limit for a topic has been reached, you can encourage the group to make a decision or defer the topic and move on.
How do you estimate how long a topic will take?
There isn't an exact way to estimate the amount of time a topic needs. You can look at past meetings to see how much time a similar topic took, but in most cases you'll need to make an educated guess. Based on the outcome you're trying to reach, just roughly estimate how long the discussion should take.
Step 1:
Create your agenda as you normally would. Don't worry about time estimates yet.
Step 2:
Roughly estimate how much time each topic needs to reach its desired outcome.
Step 3:
Add up the time estimates for each topic. Is this less than the actual meeting length?
Can your reduce any of the time estimates? If not, you’ll need to remove topics.
Since this is primarily a planning tool for you, it's okay to be wrong, but you want to err on the side of caution. It's better to finish the meeting early rather than run over time.
As a general rule of thumb, leave a 10 minute buffer for every hour of the meeting. This means if your meeting is 1 hour long, plan for all the topics to be finished in 50 minutes, so that you have 10 minutes to spare if any topics take more time than you planned for.
What is MeetingMix?
MeetingMix is an online agenda and minutes template. Use it to write the agenda and estimate topic times for your next meeting.
