How to Create a Meeting Agenda: Your Complete Guide

Have you ever attended a meeting where nobody seemed to know what was going on, the conversation veered off topic, and you left without the faintest idea what to do next? 

A team meeting without an agenda is more than just unproductive; it can waste valuable time and cause people to lose focus. 

Learn how to create a meeting agenda — from what to include to how Slack can support you — and turn meetings into focused sessions that boost productivity.

Why make a team meeting agenda?

A meeting agenda defines the purpose of the meeting and creates the structure needed to guide it effectively. It’s the road map that prioritizes important topics and ensures everyone leaves the meeting knowing exactly what to do next. Agendas can also help keep the conversation focused, so meetings don’t go longer than scheduled, and everyone can get back to work as quickly as possible.

Set meeting expectations

A structured agenda sets a meeting’s expectations so that attendees understand its goals and their responsibilities. As a best practice, agendas should be shared with attendees beforehand so they have a chance to review and prepare. Agendas help set the flow of the meeting, making it less likely for anyone to stray off topic. They also let attendees know if they’re responsible for any part of the meeting, so they have time to prepare materials if necessary.

Time management and meeting efficiency

When the host of a meeting doesn’t prepare an agenda, they may let discussions meander as long as people feel like talking, or stray to topics that have nothing to do with work. Agendas set goals and time limits to keep meetings focused and efficient for everyone.

You may want to consider including estimated time allotments next to each agenda item, so hosts and attendees know when they’ve spent enough time on a topic and need to move on.

How to create a meeting agenda: A step-by-step guide

Whether you’re creating an agenda for a weekly team meeting, a client presentation, or a leadership strategy session, use a customizable meeting agenda template as a starting point. As you work on your agenda, follow these steps to make it even more effective:

Step 1: Identify the purpose of the meeting

Clear objectives steer productive conversations. That’s why your first step is to define the meeting’s goal: This is what you hope to accomplish.

This purpose should be specific and lead to tangible outcomes like a list of ideas, a business decision, or a performance improvement plan. If additional actions are necessary, attendees should leave the meeting with specific next steps.

When you’ve determined your meeting’s objective, write it at the top of the meeting agenda.

Step 2: List key discussion topics

Next, decide what topics to cover during the meeting. This could include information to share, problems to discuss, or questions to ask attendees. Whatever you put on the list, make sure it’s absolutely necessary to achieve the meeting’s purpose.

Consider posting agendas to your team’s Slack channel to make things more collaborative. This way, anyone can add an item, suggest a topic, or simply view the agenda ahead of time.

Step 3: Allocate time for each topic

Once you’ve chosen each agenda item, estimate the time it may take to adequately cover each one. This will help keep the discussion focused while ensuring there’s sufficient time for any questions or discussions.

It’s also helpful to think about a logical order for each agenda item to make the most of everyone’s time. For example, if some topics on the agenda only pertain to a handful of your team members, put them at the end, and let people know they can drop off the call at that time if needed.

Step 4: Designate topic leaders

Assign specific roles like facilitator, timekeeper, and note-taker so all attendees know what they’re responsible for before the meeting starts. If you use huddles for your team meetings, Slack AI can not only take notes for you, but it can also send notes, summaries, and transcripts to attendees post-meeting.

Be sure to identify the people who should be prepared to present or contribute to an agenda item. For example, if you need to know what’s going on with a project nearing completion, assign the project manager to give a brief status update during the meeting.

Step 5: Include time for Q&A or open discussion

Once all essential topics are covered, make time for team members to ask questions or raise topics not on the agenda. This gives your team a chance to contribute and can encourage everyone to stay engaged.

Include the Q&A/open discussion on the agenda, as well as the time it may take to cover. Invite attendees to think ahead of time about what they want to bring up. Teams can also use a Slack canvas to let attendees add discussion questions as the meeting progresses.

Types of team meetings and their agendas

From casual brainstorming sessions to tightly organized project kickoffs, meetings vary greatly. No matter the style, though, one thing stays the same: having an agenda helps keep things on track and productive.

Of course, what goes on the agenda depends on the meeting, but many follow a similar structure. Here’s how to put together an effective agenda for a few of the most common meeting types:

Weekly check-ins and updates

Weekly meetings bring together people who work on the same team or project so they can discuss progress, share ideas, and tackle challenges.

These are important opportunities to touch base, but can often feel redundant if they’re held too often or last too long. A team meeting agenda template that keeps the conversation focused may include:

• Quick status updates from relevant team members
• Addressing current challenges, including workloads, bottlenecks, or other roadblocks
• Next steps and action items alignment

Project kickoff meetings

Project kickoffs help ensure everyone understands a project’s scope, goals, and timeline, as well as their unique responsibilities. Creating a meeting agenda ahead of a kickoff meeting is important for its success, since it often must cover a lot of information in a short period of time.

A kickoff meeting agenda might include:

• A project overview, including its scope and deliverables
• Team members’ roles and responsibilities
• Timeline and key milestones
• A communication plan
• Q&A period
• Next steps and action items alignment

Brainstorming sessions

Brainstorming sessions are much more flexible than most meetings, but that doesn’t mean they don’t need an agenda. The most productive brainstorming sessions still follow a simple meeting agenda to help focus everyone’s creativity.

An agenda for a brainstorming session might include:

• Goals alignment
• Idea generation
• Idea evaluation
• Next steps and action items alignment

Retrospective or feedback meetings

Providing feedback or critiquing progress can be difficult, but it’s necessary for growth. In a retrospective meeting (a meeting to review project performance) or feedback meeting (one dedicated to constructive feedback), it’s important to emphasize what went well while identifying opportunities for growth.

An effective retrospective meeting agenda might include:

• Wins/strengths recognition
• Improvement opportunities discussion
• Improvement plan development
• Brief Q&A
• Next steps and action items alignment

 

Using technology to create better agendas

From sharing agendas digitally to writing them with help from AI, tools are available to support agenda creation and management. These strategies can help you use technology to optimize your agenda creation process:

Creating agendas with digital tools

Slack’s collaboration features make it simple for teams to share documents and other information relevant to meeting agendas and give feedback in real time. Teams can also use third-party tools like Leadr and Fellow to automatically prompt attendees to contribute to a meeting agenda from right within Slack.

Slack AI pulls from data already in Slack to create channel recaps and thread summaries to help you build meeting agendas faster. Teams can also assign AI agents like Agentforce to draft meeting agendas using automated workflows, or chat directly with Agentforce to add topics to an agenda.

Enhancing collaboration with Slack

Once your agenda is built, you can use project management software to share it and visualize timelines and individual responsibilities. For example, you can integrate Slack with tools like Google Calendar, Trello, and Asana to share agendas and real-time notifications.

Slack also enhances collaboration with huddles and canvases. Huddles let teams meet informally (via video or audio), while digital whiteboards (canvases) let teams share notes and resources in real time — all without leaving Slack.

Here’s how to use huddles:

During the meeting, use Slack AI to summarize the conversation, or have an AI agent capture and send out meeting minutes to the team after it ends. Turn agents into digital teammates that can create and assign action items to team members or launch related workflows directly in Slack.

Following up after meetings

Meetings are worthless if they don’t lead to tangible results like increased productivity or performance improvements. Follow these steps to make sure your meeting’s benefits last long after it wraps up.

Documenting key takeaways and decisions

Anything not documented runs the risk of being forgotten or misinterpreted. That’s why it’s essential to record meeting minutes. You can streamline meeting minutes with a template or use Slack AI to take minutes for you.

Some tips for taking (and sharing) effective meeting notes include:

• Sort topics by priority or team member
• Consolidate notes after the meeting
• Highlight only essential information, including next steps
• Share notes via team channels or canvases for easy visibility

Assigning action items and deadlines

Next steps are a critical part of translating your meeting into tangible action. Don’t end a meeting without making sure everyone knows what their action items are and when they’re due. It can be helpful to send a next-steps summary to a team channel to ensure alignment. You can also let Agentforce identify and message your teammates in Slack. Agentforce can send direct messages through prompts or as part of your workflow to automatically remind people of next steps.

Team meeting agenda template

Do more with structured meeting agendas

Avoid meetings that get derailed or waste everyone’s time. Create an agenda that gives your meetings structure, focus, and concrete takeaways. This not only helps you keep your team on track, but it also ensures you meet the goals you set. Use Slack’s powerful collaboration tools and Agentforce to build agendas faster, get input from the whole team, and increase meeting success and productivity.

FAQs

What should you do if you don’t cover the full meeting agenda?

If you run out of time during a meeting, you can table the remaining topics and schedule a brief follow-up to cover them. Alternatively, you could address outstanding topics using digital tools like Slack huddles or team channels.

How can remote teams use meeting agendas?

Remote teams benefit from meeting agendas in the same way that in-person teams do. Remote teams can use Slack to collaborate on meeting agendas in real time by adding new resources or notes to a shared digital document.

Are there any tools to help create meeting agendas?

Several tools support meeting agenda creation. Project management software lets you view ongoing tasks and timelines, which can be added to a meeting agenda. Collaboration features like Slack canvas let you create agendas with input from your team.

If you want a tool that can help you write an agenda, lean on AI assistants for content generation for support.