Planning your ISO 9001 Planning Meetings

A. Planning your meeting

Determine who should attend. Include top management. Answer these questions:

1. Who will be able to decide which employees will be assigned tasks?
2. Will they know whether the employees' workload will be able to accommodate the assigned tasks?

Create an Agenda, items to include:

1. Review Task list.
2. Determine how to group tasks.
3. Group tasks by the area responsible for the requirement where possible. (If you can group requirements, you can assign a set of requirements to an individual or team from the relevant area.)
4. Assign the tasks to individuals or teams.
   
   • Review the responsibilities to make sure that they are well dispersed, not assigned heavily to one group or one individual.
5. Determine resources required for completion of the tasks.
6. Will teams or individuals need assistance with other responsibilities during the ISO 9001:2000 project?
7. What kind of technical guidance will be needed to allow these teams or individuals to complete the tasks efficiently and effectively?
   
   • An external consultant?
   • An internal consultant?
   • Assistance from the management representative?
   • Prepared materials?
   • Special Training?
8. Assign dates to tasks.
   
   • Stagger start dates according to resources available.
   • Determine which tasks you need to complete in the beginning to allow others to build on, for example: Management Responsibility. Complete the Quality Policy and Quality Goals as well as identifying key processes and their interrelation early on in the project.
   • Estimate the amount of time needed to complete each task based on the amount of resources available to the task.

B. Holding the meeting

1. Follow your agenda, fill in responsibility and dates on your task list as you proceed.
2. Keep minutes of the meeting, including attendees. This will show top mana