Reduce redundancy. Having multiple meetings or reports with the same purpose is just as insane as it sounds. One strategy to avoid this is to combine the team and business status meetings. Another is to combine multiple projects for the same business unit into one status meeting. If multiple groups need to receive status reports, agree on a common format to avoid duplicate efforts. Be aware, however, that if the original reports serve completely different purposes, combining them may not offer any benefit.

Manage meetings. As meetings are combined and more people and projects are involved, it becomes increasingly important to manage meetings well. Share the meeting's purpose ahead of time, along with material to be reviewed. If an agenda isn't sent prior to the meeting, at least list the main discussion topics on the invitation.

If status meetings tend to immediately turn into working sessions, be sure to spend the first five minutes reviewing the status of the project. Make sure that risks and issues are openly communicated and discussed. These tend to get overlooked in order to get to the more "important stuff." Move them to the front of the agenda.

It's vital to keep minutes of each meeting. If something isn't written down, it's as if it was never mentioned.

Know your limits. Many project managers today are running more than one project at a time. It's important to know how much is too much and to be able to say "no thank you" when offered additional projects. Conservatively, even small projects will take an average of six hours of project management time per week to handle basic tasks such as status reporting, status meetings, maintaining the schedule, and handling risks and issues. This doesn't include design or technical discussions. When managers become overcommitted, productivity and quality quickly fall. If you try to focus on everything, you'll accomplish nothing.