Know the feeling? You’re deep in a project. Things look fine, until you hit a point where you simply lack the knowledge. It often surfaces during the planned check-ins.
That’s the moment for an expert meeting. You bring the right people together — technical experts, or people with deeper experience and process knowledge from departments like HR or Production. You focus on a specific question and find the answer that moves you forward. It’s not a broad discussion — it’s a session where a small team with focus and expertise resolves one bottleneck. In the projects I run, this happens regularly. It’s a prerequisite for getting a project to a good outcome.
What is an expert meeting?
As the name suggests, an expert meeting is a gathering of a small professional team focused on one specific question or challenge within a project. Unlike general project meetings — which review progress and tackle daily issues — expert meetings exist to dig deeper and solve harder problems.
Expert meetings aren’t only for technical challenges. They often hinge on substantive knowledge from a specific department or role — HR, production, marketing. Those people may not be technical, but their deep knowledge of processes, regulations or customers makes them indispensable for finding solutions that are not only technically feasible but also operationally effective.
For example: you’re mid-ERP implementation and run into a problem that specifically affects HR processes. The technical side looks fine, but the new workflow doesn’t match how the organisation registers and manages its employees. Here you organise an expert meeting with the HR manager, who knows exactly which processes are essential and which bottlenecks need solving. This makes sure the system actually fits the business needs — instead of just functioning correctly from a technical standpoint.
When do you use an expert meeting?
The first expert meetings actually happen during the fit-gap analysis. In many cases the employees with the most knowledge of a given process will join. In my experience, expert meetings during implementation are typically scheduled when:
- A specific technical problem needs solving. Complex integrations, customisations, configuration issues.
- Deep process knowledge is required. Sometimes expertise must come from people who know the process inside out — department heads or external experts.
- Operational changes need to be made. When you’re rolling out a new workflow for HR or production, you need the knowledge of the experts who do this daily.
The goal of the expert meeting isn’t to meet endlessly, but to give focused, efficient depth to the most complex or process-oriented challenges a project can face.
The benefits of an expert meeting
1. Focus on a single problem. Where general project meetings cover multiple topics, an expert meeting focuses on one — technical, process or operational. That gives you maximum concentration and speed in finding answers.
2. The right people are involved. Only the people with the right expertise — technical specialists, or people with substantive knowledge from HR, marketing or production. This prevents unnecessary opinions from muddying the discussion.
3. Decision speed. With the experts in one room, decisions get made on the spot. That avoids the delays of long decision processes or back-and-forth between departments.
4. Quality of the solution. Bringing the right people together means the solution works not only technically but also fits the operational needs of the organisation.
Example: an HR expert meeting during an ERP implementation
Take a specific example. You’re implementing a new system that will manage all employee data and leave requests. Technically the system looks fine, but when you bring in the HR manager you discover it doesn’t account for certain local laws around leave rights. Plus it misses important features for managing employee files and tracking trainings and certifications.
This is the moment for an expert meeting with the HR manager. The session ensures that the system meets not only technical requirements but also the organisation’s operational needs.
Thanks to this expert meeting, the system aligns with what the HR department actually needs — without costly adjustments after the system is already live.
Expert meetings as a source of success
In my experience, expert meetings are often the turning point of a project. Whether it’s a technical challenge or a process bottleneck, these focused sessions with the right experts can make the difference between a project that stays stuck and one that breaks through to success.
Conclusion
Expert meetings are an essential part of the TARGET method and can make the difference at any point during a project. By bringing together a small specialised team to focus on one challenge, you prevent the project from getting stuck on technical, process or operational issues.
So when your project hits complex problems, get the experts together — technical or operational — and run a focused expert meeting to get the project back on track.