Project Management Corner: The Project Kickoff by Anne Lewson
What is the purpose of a project kickoff?
Think of the project kickoff as a “Meet and Greet.” It brings all the “actors” together for the first time and describes the project’s goals. The project kickoff is a cross between the first day of high-school and a locker-room speech from a coach before a major football game. It is your chance for you, the PM, to set the tone, right from the beginning and for the team to get acquainted with each other and get a feeling of what is coming. You want the team members to leave the kickoff energized and excited to be on your team!
Please remember to be considerate and realize that some participants may feel nervous by working on the project. Your goal is to ensure the team “forms” rapidly and becomes highly-functional fast.
Who should attend the project kickoff call?
The resources you expect in an agile team setting should attend the project kickoff call: scrum master and/or project manager, product owner, team members (Dev, BA, QA, DevOps. DB and security admins, etc.), and other stakeholders: business and/or executive sponsors, IT, TechOps, legal, and InfoSec. Encourage C-levels or VIPs to be present. You should also encourage the executive leadership and business management to actively participate and provide a short message of inspiration or support for the team at the kickoff.
My recommendation is to invite all relevant project stakeholders to the project kickoff meeting even if they are not officially assigned to the project. The visibility is good and encourages the team.
How long should the project kickoff call be?
The kickoff call should last one hour, maximum. This will leave enough time to present all the agenda items AND it should provide time for the audience to ask questions, raise concerns, and/or provide encouragement.
It is important that you as the project manager be ready for the Q&A (as discussed below).
When should the kickoff call occur?
You, as the project manager, need time to prepare for the kickoff call. All the necessary information may not be readily available when the project commences.
Examples: Is the project team fully identified? Are all the tools you will need in place? Do software licenses still need to be purchased? Are accounts being added in the organization? Have PCs been shipped and/or received?
Once you have the team and logistics confirmed, and a clear project charter (or high level review of the project’s strategic objectives/goals, deliverables, and timeline), you should be able to schedule the kickoff.
Project Kickoff Agenda
The project kickoff should include the following agenda items:
Team introductions | roles | responsibilities
Project overview
Project schedule & milestones
Project management approach (optional)
Project tools | environment | logistics
Project risks & mitigations
Next steps | owners
Open discussion | Q&A
Introduce yourself and briefly describe your philosophy on managing projects:
I will list below what works for me personall, but you should come up with what works for you.
I want everyone to have a voice and feel empowered as well as to ask questions, be accountable, transparent, and committed. I do not claim to have the answers to all the questions the team may have, and I will do my best to find the right answers and provide what the team needs. Respect and kindness across the team (and beyond the team) are essential. Everyone will make mistakes (including me); the key is to learn from the mistakes and move forward. I want everyone to come to work thinking they are making a difference, that they can learn new things, and that they will be happy to be part of the group. My role as the project manager is to channel the positive energy of the group, to listen, and to lead the group to success. We are all professional and we are in this together.
Team introductions | roles | responsibilities
Display an organization diagram of your project team. Keep it simple. Make it as flat as possible. You do not want to annoy any one with hierarchy.
Let the team members introduce themselves and discuss their role and responsibilities on the project.Ensure the team members know that they will have to introduce themselves before the kickoff so that they are prepared. Each person should provide their name, their geographical location, a line or two on who they are, what expertise they bring to the project, and what their role and responsibilities will be in delivering success.
Feel free to ask the team to add a small anecdote about themselves (only if they want to) so that the audience remembers them better and the team gets to know one another on a more personal level ( for example, I have a dog Charlie, I rebuild Camaro engines in my free time, I like to bake bread, etc.).
If people come from various organizations, I recommend the specific organizations not be mentioned in the project kickoff as you want the team to unify as one entity and team.
Project overview
If you have already received a project charter or overview from a business stakeholder or contract, utilize it and produce a slide describing the anticipated goals/objectives and anticipated outcomes and deliverables in a bullet format. Use simple terms when describing the project goals and keep it high level. As mentioned above, too many details will deter the interest of the group.
Project schedule & milestones
Highlight the project length in number of weeks or months. List any known milestones, for example infrastructure ready, Release Part 1, database structure modernized, Project Plan V1, etc. If you already know your anticipated go-live date, this is a critical date to mention to the team. It is also worth highlighting any events or items that will help the team better understand the deliverables and milestones through time.
Project management approach (optional)
Share the methodology you will leverage on the project: Agile methodology or waterfalls or hybrid. Describe how the project management to be conducted: List the Agile ceremonies: Standups, Demos, Refinement, Retrospectives, and/or other ceremonies.If using Agile, list which type (Scrum, SAFe, Kanban) and length of sprints (2 weeks, 3 weeks, etc.).You should also share whether you plan on having regular releases after each sprint and what the progress tracking method will be during the project.
If you do not know enough about the project itself, you may not be ready to select and discuss the Agile delivery method, so you should make a point to identify when the agile project management methodology will be decided.
Project tools | environment | logistics
You should ensure everyone on the team understands the standard tool suite, environment and logistics for the project. This might involve remote desktop access, security protocols, and storage of project data. It may also include collaboration/communication tools, storage and documentation sites (Slack, Teams, Email, Dropbox, OneDrive, Confluence, etc.).
Tools to manage the project may involve Jira , Azure DevOps, or other options. You may have recurring meetings and logistics to be scheduled and coordinated across the organization (for example, creating the development, test, and production environments).
Let the team know not to worry if they do not know the tools and relay how and when the time and resources will be made available for them to learn what is needed to be successful.You may also use this project kickoff time to increase the team members’ interest if you bring newer, “snazzy” tools (like Smartsheet, Power BI/analytics, Lucid Charts, Vizio, etc.).
Project risks & mitigations
Although you want the project kickoff call to be positive and exciting, you will need to discuss potential risks and mitigation strategies.This is where you describe the big challenges lying ahead and how you plan on tackling them. Speak to and discuss the items that could derail this project and approaches to resolve the challenges if encountered.
· If you know the mitigation paths already, share them with the audience.
· For you know risks but do not have a resolution yet, it is okay to acknowledge the issues and discuss the challenges with the team. You may plan to come back to the risks to set a time to find the mitigation with the team.
Again, you do not have to have all the answers at the time of the project kickoff.
Next steps | owners
Now that you have laid out the basic information, it is critical to discuss what steps will occur next and who owns and has responsibility for execution. You do not want to overwhelm the team with a huge list of to-dos.
A key next step should focus on onboarding the team. The initial effort is to learn, gather information, get more context on what needs to be done and get to know one anoother. I would suggest keeping the team together in these early meetings so that everyone is exposed to the same information. It will ease the forming/storming/norming process of the team.
Open discussion | Q&A
Be prepared! Ensure that you and your audience understand the question, so repeat questions posed, or rephrase questions and confirm intent, if necessary.
Often, project team members will posit an obscure or “on-the-fringe” question. If you do get such question, ask if anyone in the audience already knows the answer and if not, simply say, “Let me take a note and I will follow up on this after the call.”
Closing thoughts | take aways
Make sure to thank everyone for attending the project kickoff call. End the project kicoff with a positive statement like “Onward with project Atlas!”
Remember the analogy of the coach of a football team. Make your team feel like a winning team that is postured for success from the onset!