Sent out the meeting invite several weeks or even months before the kickoff date.Īll you need to do is send out an Outlook invite with some text like: This way I can block a slot in everybody’s calendar and I can reserve a suitably sized conference room. That’s why I always schedule the kickoff meeting way ahread of time, like months in advance. There are always scheduling conflicts because people have so much on their calendar. Large meetings with many participants are always hard to schedule. After the meeting – sharing the presentation with your audience.Conducting the meeting – you are the showmaster.Preparing the meeting – creating the slides.Scheduling the meeting – usually several weeks or even months in advance.Here’s the process for preparing and running a kick off: It all depends on the size of the project. The cycle of a project kickoff including preparation and the meeting itself can span across several weeks or even months. Next, let’s explore how a kickoff is conducted in the real world. It could also be HR if the project has major influence on employees, e.g. It could also be Purchasing in case you’re buying expensive goods as part of the project. (If you are not sure how to find out who your stakeholders are, I strongly encourage you to read my article on stakeholder analysis).Įxamples of important stakeholders could be Legal if your project touches legal issues. Key stakeholders could be representatives from areas or departments that are either strongly impacted by the project or whose expertise has major influence on the project’s success Then there’s the project team, which are staff members who are doing the actual project work. He’s the one who leads through the meeting. No need to explain why the project manager should attend. By contractor I’m referring to the party that is hired to do the actual project work. management from both customer (sponsor) and contractor.The following people should attend the kickoff: And within weeks your wonderful project plan will fall apart. You will face resistance from team members because they feel having been run over. You will find yourself in discussions with people who don’t want to do what you expect them to do. Skipping the kickoff because you think it’s not necessary will get you into trouble further on. It’s about creating motivation within the team and getting everyone to take over responsibility. So, a kickoff is much more than just showing a few slides. There is agreement upon a well defined scope and it helps everyone involved in the project alignement to a goal. The kickoff meeting process and agenda ensure everyone is engaged, understands the project goals, scope, and risks, and actively takes responsibility for their roles. Pooja, a program manager from Delhi summarized the value of kickoffs very well: ![]() That’s why a kickoff meeting is super important. It also gives people the opportunity to have their questions answered. The kickoff is the event where all this information is shared with all project team members. Why having a project kickoff?Ī project can only be successful if all participants have a common understanding of the project’s purpose, timeline, organization and their responsibilities. You can think of a kickoff like of a pre-flight briefing that pilots will do with the crew before they embark on a flight. Only after all this work has been completed will the project kick off be scheduled. (For a complete list of steps to set up a project, check out the project kickoff checklist) Then the project has to be properly planned, staffed and the budget has to be approved etc. A project charter will be created which outlines the purpose and scope of the project. The customer, contractor and stakeholders have to find a common project goal. There’s usually a labor-intensive phase leading up to the kickoff. During the kick off, he will give an overview of the project goal, schedule, project organization, expectations towards team members and other critical information. ![]() The project kickoff meeting is a meeting where the project team is introduced to a project right before it goes into execution. What a project kick-off is about and how to actually run a good kickoff meeting. In this article we’ll go through all the steps. No meeting is more important when launching a project than the project kick-off meeting.
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