Meeting agendas make meetings more productive by listing topics up for discussion and informing attendees as to who will be leading the discussion or presenting different topics at the meeting; they also allow people to keep track of time if the meeting time has to be limited. Once you have created a template for an agenda, all you'll have to do in future is plug in whatever new topics, speakers and time frames are appropriate.

Open a word processing application and create a new document.

Create an enlarged header at the top of the page to serve as a placeholder on the template for the meeting's title, such as "Weekly Status Update." Add a line of text below the title, in smaller text, to serve as a placeholder for the meeting's date, time and location.

Create a list of discussion items for the agenda and arrange them in the order in which they need to be discussed (primarily dictated by each item's respective importance.) For example:

New business prospects Project issues Sales strategy Quarterly reports Open discussion

Add the names of those who are responsible for leading or presenting each discussion item, and then add the amount of time that they are allotted to speak, for example:

New business prospect -- Mgr, Business Development -- 10 minutes Project issues -- Director, Project Management -- 10 minutes
Sales strategy -- VP, Sales -- 15 minutes Quarterly reports -- VP, Finance -- 15 minutes Open discussion -- 10 minutes

Save the template and replace the information in the template as needed whenever you are preparing an agenda for a meeting in the future.