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Jory MacKay
Jory is a writer, content strategist and award-winning editor of the Unsplash Book. He contributes to Inc., Fast Company, Quartz, and more.
September 17, 2024 · 11 min read

How to create better action items (with free templates)

🎁 Bonus Material: Free Action Items Template


How to create better action items

There’s nothing worse than leaving a productive meeting and then… crickets.

While there’s no denying that transferring plans into action is notoriously hard (with some studies showing that, on average, we only complete 66% of our assigned tasks), the culprit isn’t always just a lack of time or feeling overwhelmed — but poorly managed action items.

A well-crafted action item perfectly combines the what, when, who, and why of a task to bridge the gap between what you say you want to do and seeing real results.

Without them, there’s a good chance your great ideas will disappear in the wind or be deprioritized as soon as an urgent task arises.

If you’re tired of having the same meeting or conversation without anything to show for it (or are a manager who wants to improve their team’s productivity), this guide and our free action items cheat sheet template is for you.

Jump to section:

What are action items?

An action item is a specific piece of work, often arising from a meeting, that is assigned to someone to complete. Action items are the building blocks of great projects, underpinning the tasks, milestones, and deliverables that ultimately help achieve the project goal.

Effective action items aren’t complex — but they do need to contain four critical components:


The 4 elements of action items

Action items are used across all areas of business, but are very common in the world of project management — especially at key points such as kick off or status update meetings.

This is because for projects to progress effectively, they require actions to be completed by different people at different times, each of which contributes to the project’s success.

Here’s an example:

Let’s say you’re working on a six-month project with the objective of creating a new software product. There will be hundreds of action items to complete throughout the project — from designers creating wireframes during the design phase to developers translating those details into code to team leaders training support staff on how the new features work.

If project managers and team leads don’t set, manage, and track these action items effectively, teams quickly become confused, risking conflict, delays, overspend, scope creep, and poor quality.

The biggest benefits of getting action items right

But, get your action items right and you’ll see a range of great benefits, including:

The simplest way to create better action items

Like many things in project management, the best way to create great action items is to follow a defined process.

To help keep it simple, here’s an 8-step guide to planning, assigning, and managing action items:

1. Understand your action writing approach

Before you begin writing action items, you need to understand the level of support your team needs. This ensures the structure, style, and rhythm of your actions will boost your team’s effectiveness rather than bog everyone down.

Real-life example:

Jack’s a Project Manager for Quantum, a provider of data dashboarding software. Jack is preparing for a kick-off meeting with a new client and is planning his action item approach. Having met the client briefly, he knows they’re new to data dashboards, so he’ll need to provide detailed actions that will be reviewed weekly to help keep the project moving.

Pro tip: Create custom fields in your project management tool for your action item structure. Every team is different, which means your needs may not fit into the standard fields and forms in your project management tool.


Using custom fields in Planio

With Planio, you can create and add custom fields for specific issue types — including everything from lists to custom text

2. Summarize what needs to be done (the what)

The foundational part of any action item is clearly defining what must be done. This gets everyone aligned as to the outcome of the action, removing ambiguity and setting a target to work towards.

Real-life example:

As Jack prepares for the kick-off meeting, he considers the actions he’ll need the client to complete after the meeting. This will include the client gathering requirements from their business stakeholders to help Jack with the build. Jack drafts the following action item:

“Engage business stakeholders and capture their data dashboard requirements.”

3. Provide context for why this task matters (the why)

Projects are fast-moving endeavors and, at times, it can be difficult to keep up with the latest developments. For this reason, it’s helpful to add context to your action items, explaining why the team is completing them or what they will help achieve.

Here are three different ways you can provide more context to your action items:

Real-life example:

As Jack’s client is new to building data dashboards, he wants to provide context so that they understand why it’s important to capture business requirements. He updates his action item accordingly:

“To help Quantum design the best solution, engage business stakeholders and capture their data dashboard requirements.”

4. Set a priority level and due date (the when)

Everything must fall into place at the right time, this includes your action items. Setting a due date is essential so that everyone knows when an action needs completing.


Setting one of your custom designed priorities in a Planio issue

As projects get busy, it’s also a best practice to assign a priority level to your action items, ensuring the most critical actions get the focus they need.

Real-life example:

To stay on plan and create the first iteration, Jack needs to begin the build phase in around two weeks’ time. Alongside gathering requirements, he’ll also ask the client to suggest a color scheme, pick a font, and provide a logo, but these actions are less important.

With that in mind, Jack updates his action item with a due date:

“To help Quantum design the best solution, engage business stakeholders and capture their data dashboard requirements by 15th May. (Priority #1)”

5. Assign the task to a team member (the who)

The last piece of the action item puzzle is assigning the task to an owner. Where possible, actions should be assigned to an individual, as it ensures the highest level of accountability. But, if you’re working at a broader level, you can assign actions to teams or stakeholder groups, too.

Real-life example:

At the end of the kick-off meeting, Jack agrees that the client team is best placed to complete the requirements gathering action. Sarah works as a Business Analyst and has experience of capturing requirements from stakeholders, so is the natural choice.

Jack updates and assigns the action:

“To help Quantum design the best solution, Sarah is to engage business stakeholders and capture their data dashboard requirements by 15th May. (Priority #1)”

6. Document the actions in your project management system

To avoid actions getting forgotten about, you need to document and share them. While we’ll provide some great action item templates later on, the best place to store them is within your project management system. This helps keep everything in one place and makes actions easier to track moving forwards.


How to use Planio to create real action items

Here are some tips on how to use Planio to capture and track action items:

Real-life example:

After the meeting, Jack uploads the actions from the kick-off meeting into his project management software, including the what, why, when, and who of each one. He invites the clients into the project management software so that everyone can collaborate on the project in one place.

7. Provide support to the action owner

Where many project managers go wrong is that they don’t support the action owner once the action is assigned. They only check in on the due-date, by which point it’s too late to solve any problems or provide clarifications.

Without a well-crafted action item your great ideas will disappear in the wind.

Real-life example:

A few days after the kick-off meeting, Jack reaches out to Sarah to ask how she’s progressing with capturing the business requirements. Sarah has some clarification questions she plans to raise at the next meeting. Instead of waiting, Jack schedules a quick phone call later that day to ensure more progress can be made ahead of the meeting.

8. Mark the action complete and go again

Great news! You’ve created, assigned, and managed your action items through to their completion. While it’s easy to just tick items off your to-do list, make sure you aren’t too hasty and take the time to properly support the team and validate tasks have been completed correctly.

Real-life example:

Jack gets the client teams together to review their progress. Sarah has done a fantastic job with the business requirements, providing Jack what he needs to get started with the build. Jack now asks the clients to focus on the color scheme, font, and logo actions he suggested previously, setting due dates and assigning action owners accordingly.

Action item templates and examples to get you started

To help bring the world of action items to life, let’s look at some examples of action item formats for different projects and project phases.

There’s nothing worse than leaving a productive meeting and then… crickets.

Marketing project — Design phase:

Action items can be kept simple, providing the core information on what, why, when and who that we’ve discussed in this guide. If it’s a small project or high-performing team, sometimes you can even skip the ‘why’.

Software development project — Testing phase:

For technical projects, action items may be linked to other items such as bugs, issue numbers, or project references.

Construction project — Build phase:

If you want to highlight the priority of an action, you can provide additional information on the consequences of it being missed or its priority versus other actions.

Final tip: Avoid these common mistakes when using action items

When we’re in a rush to get things done, tasks can easily get forgotten. Having a defined actions process helps ensure nothing falls through the cracks.

But even when you have a process in place, make sure you keep an eye out for these common action item mistakes:

To maximize the effectiveness of your action items, use tools like Planio to plan, document, and manage your action items effectively. Not only will this save you time, but it’ll help the entire team stay on the same page, and give them the support they need to complete their actions and deliver great project outcomes!

Try Planio with your own team — free for 30 days! (No credit card required)