Managing projects from a client perspective: The concept of the meetings-flow approach

In a typical contract-based project, having appropriate monitoring and intervention is critical so that the client can manage the black box-like supplier's development processes. The traditional milestone approach of progress checking is insufficient to serve this need. The partnering approach, on the other hand, seems overly burdensome to clients. An intermediate way of allowing a contract-based client to monitor and intervene in the development of a project is the meetings-flow approach (MFA). The MFA synergizes the interconnectivity of project functional meetings and institutionalizes a continuous method of intervention that forms a client-side sustainable project procurement process. This paper explores the concept and the design of the meetings-flow approach, and presents a descriptive case study to investigate its application. After discussing the initial results and lessons learned from this approach, the paper comparatively summarizes the MFA in terms of the roles it may play in client-side project management.