At the start of a project when many people are remotely located (including from home) it is easy to get sucked into a time-drain succession of meeting-after-meetings without little real demonstrable decisions or progression to show. Meetings are poorly defined, decisions are not recorded clearly, and tasks are not well defined and allocated.

Here is my seven step suggestion to avoid this:

1. One person is responsible for the completion of project definition.
2. This person (“definition owner“) states the objective/s, potential approaches, and delivery date estimates in a simple document.
3. A “Review Team” of stakeholders considers this document and recommend any changes. This can be done in specific meetings or independently using collaboration tools. Adjustments are completed and locked.
4. The definition owner then expands on this, turning it into a step-by-step high-level project plan.
5. Again – the Review Team assess the plan and any changes are made immediately. The plan is then locked.
6. In the final expansion, the definition owner refines the plan into a full detail specification, defines scope, adds work estimates and assignments.
7. Final appraisal from the Review Team and gives explicit sign-off.