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Project Management vocabulary · Status Reporting & Governance

Action item

Meaning in project management, with examples

/ˈækʃən ˌaɪtəm/nounCore term

In project management, action item means: A specific task agreed during a meeting, with a person responsible for it and a date by which it must be done.

In Turkish: aksiyon maddesi, yapılacak iş, görev maddesi

How it is used

Written in meeting minutes and follow-up emails, and checked at the next meeting. People assign, take, own, close or chase action items. Often simply called actions: “I'll take that action.”

Example sentences

  1. I'll send the minutes with the action items and owners by the end of the day.

  2. There are still four open action items from last week's meeting.

Common collocations

  • assign an action item
  • open action items
  • action item owner
  • close an action item
  • follow upTo contact someone again or take further action to check progress, get an answer or make sure something agreed actually happens.
  • status reportA short, regular report that tells stakeholders how a project is going: what has been done, what comes next, and the main risks, issues and decisions needed.
  • RAID logA single document or table where a project tracks its Risks, Assumptions, Issues and Dependencies, each with an owner and a status.
  • taskA single piece of work that one person or a small group can complete, usually with an owner, a start and end date and a link to a bigger deliverable.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Status Reporting & Governance

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