Hi everyone and welcome back to my channel.
Hopefully you had a wonderful weekend. You were able to relax,
spend some time with the people you live with,
either trying out a new recipe face mask,
watching a film,
whatever you needed to do to decompress and I'm hope that you were able to do
that.
If you haven't checked out my blog I wrote about sometimes just letting go of
thinking that you can get everything done that you have on your to do list.
If you get at least three to five things done,
then you have been successful.
So please check that out if you haven't read it yet.
So this has been the most hectic,
craziest couple of weeks that I've had.
I've had three new projects start as well as my MBA class,
which was all on investment analysis. It was ending.
So on top of having to do project final exam study for those starting a new
class cause my new MBA CA class started on Saturday.
I had three new projects that were starting as well as making sure that the
existing one was on its way of finishing the sprint review.
Being able to push out the release that we had ready as well as start the new
sprint.
So I wanted to talk about kicking off a project that is something I had to do
three times that this past couple of weeks.
And so I wanted to share with you the presentation slide that I created as well
as how I made sure that the meeting was productive,
efficient, and we were all able to get out on time even earlier.
So that's something that I wanted to make sure that I shared with you.
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So as I was saying, I had three projects that we're kicking off now.
It seems like many clients are looking for that agile scrum type of environment.
So all three projects were agile scrum,
so it was easy to just use the same PowerPoint template in order for everyone to
follow along. As everyone knows, everybody's working from home.
So I made sure that I use teams and if you haven't seen my video on Microsoft
teams, please I will post the link right here or it's right here.
I always get it wrong wherever the location is and check that out.
So that is what I use and I made sure to share the PowerPoint slide that I had
created for project kickoffs.
So as with anything you have to do some prepping before the meeting.
The first thing is you want to make sure that you know who should be the
attendees of this meeting. So reach out to your client and if you have,
reach out to them too to make sure that you have the right attendee list.
The other thing that I do when I'm creating the meeting invite is that I have an
agenda so that everybody knows what is going to happen in the meeting as well as
if I don't exactly know or I'm not sure that I have the right attendee list.
I'll put a little note on there that says,
if you feel that someone should be part of this meeting that you don't see in
the attending list, please make sure to forward this meeting along.
And that takes a lot off of me because then I don't have to keep going back and
forth trying to figure out who should be participating in the meeting.
I can have the attendees do that work for me and just forward the meeting along.
The next thing that I do is I make sure that I joined the meeting five minutes
before it starts and that helps me make sure that the tech is working.
If I want to do video, which I usually don't do,
but I am contemplating if I should start doing it now that we are not meeting
face to face and I think I'm leaning towards that,
but then I have to do my makeup and do my hair.
So that's probably why I've kind of hesitated in doing it,
but I need to stop being so lazy and just do my makeup and hair.
So I think that is something that I'm going to start doing.
And so you want to make sure that all those things are working as well as your
microphone before the meeting starts.
And depending on what type of project you're on,
you will have some people who are very punctual and some meeting people who were
actually very late. So some customers are usually more punctual.
So you want to get there five minutes before so you can start letting people in.
Because one thing as someone who is using Microsoft teams,
or even if you're using another video conferencing meeting app, you usually,
if that person is not part of your company, you have to let them in.
So there'll be waiting in the lobby with elevator music and then you just have
to keep letting them in.
So that's one of the other reasons that I try to get there five minutes
beforehand. So at the start of the meeting,
I always ask the POC for the different companies that are being represented.
If the people who are the main points of contact who should be in this meeting
are in the meeting.
And this helps take a lot of the burden off of me as well because then I don't
have to keep asking everyone if they're there or not.
I can have the people in those companies make sure that they, you know,
hunt down their people if they're not in the meeting.
And that is something that you should do because then you don't have to be the
one trying to find those people. You can have them do that.
So that's something that I usually do because if the right people haven't joined
the meeting yet,
then I need to wait on those people to join the meeting because then there is no
point of the meeting and you've basically just wasted 30 minutes to an hour of
everyone's time because the person who,
or the people who shouldn't be there aren't there.
So what is the point of having a meeting when you're going to probably have to
repeat that information again.
So you want to make sure that the people who are going to be active participants
of the project are in the meeting before you get started.
The reason that date is so important is because that is when you,
you know, the project is kicking off.
So usually that is the point that people are going to start charging towards the
project. So it doesn't matter what kind of contract you have,
whether it's from fixed price times and material, whatever it is.
Usually that is the point that you're going to start seeing charges towards that
project.
So you don't want people charging beforehand because then that will skew your
metrics. And also if, especially if you're doing from fixed price,
if you start charging beforehand,
then you're going to burn the amount of money that you have on that project way
before you should.
So you want to make sure you have that kickoff because usually in people's mind
they'll know, Oh, that's when I should start charging.
And one thing I should mention is that this is talking about the project kickoff
with the client and your partners. You want to have maybe like,
um,
three to five days before this project kicked off.
You want to have an internal kickoff and that's when you work with your team.
You answer any questions that they have gathered,
any questions that they have before the project starts and you're able to get
all that done.
So then you're ready for the project kickoff with the client.
And that's when you can tell your team like, Hey, you are a hundred percent,
you are 50%, you are what, 25%.
And so there you don't have someone who's only supposed to be charging two hours
a day and they're charging eight hours a day because you never told them what
the amount of time that they should be spending on the project.
So it's very important that before you have the project kickoff that you have an
internal kickoff with your team. So now you're ready to get started.
Okay. So as you see here, um, in this template that I created,
I have the project name, my company name. If I have any partners,
I would add them on here as well, as well as the date. And as I've said before,
the importance of having that kickoff as well as having the date present.
Um,
this will become an artifact that you would either upload to your CRM if you
have one or a SharePoint repository,
if that's what you're using or a Google one,
so this is something that you would keep as an artifact for that project.
The next fly that I usually have is the agenda and I usually have on the agenda
the introductions, the project deliverables, hi timeline,
the proposed epics features and as well as any risks and issues that are you're
trying to mitigate at the moment. Any next steps and questions and discussion.
Of course, there's some times that I'll add additional size,
like let's say this is the first time someone has ever worked on an agile scrum
project.
Then I will go and I'll add a slide where it will show like how the sprints were
the, you know, daily standups and retrospective.
So then they get an idea of what to expect,
especially if they're the product owner or a main stakeholder of that project.
You want to make sure that they understand that they will be part of a couple of
meetings here or there more than they would if you were working on more of an a
waterfall type of project. So that is something that is good to have.
If it's the first time someone has ever worked in an agile scrum type of
project.
If you want you can actually make okay columns and then here you would have your
point of contact, your name,
your email and if you don't mind people calling you then you would put your
phone number here as well.
The third slide is your team.
So this would be the team that would be part of this project.
You can have your company name here or you can have the project name and then it
would be just you know, project name and then the team.
So then you would have the name of each team member here and what role they are
playing and you want to make sure that it coincides to what is in the contract
and has been agreed upon with the client. If there is time,
depending on the time you want to have everybody do like a quick intro so then
the client can know who each person on the team is and that is very important at
this time because all of us are remote so that will also give a bit of
familiarity that you wouldn't have if you just went over the slide.
The next slide would be the clients team and this is where you can,
when you get to the slide you can talk about to the client and ask them like,
Hey, who is going to be part of your team?
And you can put that on here as well.
Very important if you're doing a print,
the type of project, a scrum project,
you would have the product owner as well as any technical POC is that you would
be that your team and you would be contacting and interacting with.
That is what you would for the client's team.
You just would list all the people who will be actively participating in this
project or anybody that you'll be reaching out to to have meetings with.
The next slide that you'll have,
it's the project scope and deliverables and this should match up to what was
agreed upon in the contract. Um,
I usually have either the priorities,
so let's say that the client says,
okay, can you get,
can items dine and if there's time can do these other five.
That's the reason you would have them listed by priority.
If there is no priority and it's just, Hey,
we're going to do all these deliverables, then you would just have like ID,
which usually would just be like chronologically numbering like one, two, three,
four, five and then you would have each of the deliverables here.
The next slide I would have the project timeline.
So one thing that I love and I've been using this tool four Oh five years is
called office timeline pro. So you'll see it right here,
this cool.
If you are someone who's constantly training presentations,
I really recommend that you get this tool.
I mean this is probably the best water.
And I Googled and Googled and Googled and I finally found this, this pool.
And I'm someone who's pretty cheap. So I try to be like, Oh,
let me see if I really want this tool and let me tell you that I pay for it.
It's been like five years I've been paying for this tool.
And one thing that I like about this tool is just the ease of use.
And in the past five years they've added so much functionality to what was
already amazing. Um, so here you can actually, um,
either start off a template that they already have available to you.
Um, so as you see, like if you're doing like the roadmap,
you can do the roadmap with swim lanes. Um, if you're doing a timeline,
you can do the timeline and,
and one thing you can see is that you can see the sprint plan as well.
So here you can go ahead and click on that.
And then here you can use this template and then just create your sprint
schedule off of here. And then with the, uh, with the client,
you seem to agree upon that BIM plan.
And then if you have like a UAT schedule or you know, um,
a deployment plan or anything that has to go into the schedule,
put it on here and you guys can discuss the schedule and start doing some
negotiating on the different dates so you have listed.
So I love this tool so much. And then one thing I love is like if you create it,
and I'll probably have another video just on this cool cause, um, you know,
just want to focus on project kickoff.
And one thing I love is that RACI in two seconds it creates a timeline.
And if you don't like that timeline you can pick another template or create your
own.
And that's something that is always good to have because you don't want to have
any difference of expectations.
You want to make sure that everybody's on the same page on what is expected and
when it's expected.
So you definitely want to have a timeline if you are able to create one.
The next slide I have is epics and if you're going to have features,
features and stories and this would coincide with the deliverables.
So I quickly just came up with how I would list them.
So I would have the Epic which would coincide with the deliverable and usually
the deliverable will say things like the contractor will do,
just make sure that it's very short. Like if you can do it in five words,
five words, um,
just summarize the deliverable and then you would have like high level stories
of what will get done for that deliverable.
And this is just to get the conversation started and get everybody thinking on
what needs to happen in order to build that solution that you're trying to build
for that client. Then you want to list like early risk and issues.
So any risks that are happening,
like maybe there's a scope risk,
you don't have the type of, uh,
tools that the clients that they would provide you with. Anything like that.
You want to put that on here so that you make sure that those get medicated
before the actual project starts. Um, then you would have like next steps.
So like when is the actual start date of the project? Uh,
when your sprint zero planning will be,
how long your sprint zero planning will be.
Are there any type of repositories and maybe set up any type of,
you know, pools that need to be set up as well.
Like where are you going to manage it, manage your requirements, your stories,
and then also make sure that the code is tied to it.
So those are the types of things that you want to put in next steps as well as
get the conversation going because you don't want to wait until that,
like when the project will officially start off.
And then you want to have, if possible before the sprint zero,
you want to have deep dive session scheduled because those deep dive sessions
are kind of, you can also call them discovery sessions.
And this is when you'll figure out what exactly the client already has and what
they want. So this is something to tell them because then they'll know, Hey,
I'll be scheduling these deep dive sessions probably right the same week that
you're currently in. And so you would have that listed as well.
And then last but not least is questions and discussions.
So during your internal kickoff, if you've,
if your team has come up with a list of questions,
you would probably have them listed here and then you would ask those questions
and be like, Hey, this is what we need in order to get kick off this project.
And if you don't think you open it up for questions and discussions and usually
there will be questions on both sides.
So you will have questions,
they will have questions and this is where you can hash it out,
start giving people action items so you can make sure that you keep that project
going and you're able to,
you can get that project delivered on time and on schedule. So that's,
it's very important to open it up and not just have a project kickoff where
you're the one speaking.
You want to make sure that everybody who is disappeared in that meeting and
speaking as well. So yeah, so that is how I set up my project cough.
As I said previously,
you can have additional slides added on here so if you feel it's beneficial to
everyone to have that slide, then please make sure you add it.
It never hurts to have those slides cause one thing is is that you'll probably
sent send this to the client as well and this is something that they can also
use too.
Go back to no who is part of the project,
what was expected and so it is very good to have a very clear kickoff slide that
they can refer to later or even your team as well because like someone who's
horrible with names,
this helps me know who is part of the client side and then I won't butcher their
name because I have it in the kickoff slides that I can refer to.
So I hope that this was helpful.
Cool. I hope that this was helpful and this helps you kick off a project.
If you haven't subscribed to my newsletter, please do so now.
I will have a template of the kickoff slides that we just went over so you'll
get that below.
Please comment how your kickoffs have gone.
If it's something that you wish were a little bit more structured or you feel
them two extension,
I would love to know what you think and I will talk to you next week. Bye.