♪ Hey ♪
♪ Do-Do-Do-DoDo-Do-Do-Do-DoDo ♪
- Hey, welcome back.
We're gonna jump right in today.
Got a question for you to kick it off.
Do you have a new project coming up?
If you do, do you feel ready?
Well if you're leading the project, ya better be ready.
But here's a more important question,
are your team and your stakeholders ready?
Wait a second.
Let's take it back here.
What does ready even mean here?
Well, by ready, what I mean is,
is everyone aware of the project's goals, scope,
constraints, timing and risks?
You know, all of the details that'll really
inform how you'll get the project done together.
In my experience as a project manager, we're always ready.
Teams are always ready to start a project
because we can start working
on things with minimal barriers.
But the problem is when you just start working
without actually discussing the project details,
is you end up working on the wrong thing.
Or under the assumption
that you're supposed to do a certain thing
and you might be wrong.
I mean after all, you know what they say about assumptions?
So here's what I say, cut those assumptions
and get to the cold hard facts
by conducting a project kickoff meeting
just to set the stage for the project.
Kickoff meetings are a critical step
in your early project stages,
to make sure that your team and your stakeholders
are not only informed about the project
and what you're doing,
but also how you'll do it together.
Now these meetings can be handled in a few ways
and I'll cover some options here,
but I always recommend that when you go into any meeting,
you have a goal.
And the goal for the kickoff meeting should be
to get details out in the open and to gain alignment
on the project's goals, scope,
requirements, risks,
and any other relevant information related
to what you'll do together.
In my career as an agency project manager,
I would typically conduct two kickoffs:
An internal one with my team where everyone
gets the download on the upcoming project.
And one were the clients involved
and we discuss further details.
I always found the internal kickoff meeting
to be a great opportunity to assemble the team
and to have the person who sold or initiated the project
present the details that led
to the project's final scope of work.
The reason I like to do that is because every project
comes with a backstory, right?
There's a reason that you're doing that project.
There are people who have goals or ideas
that led to writing that project's scope.
And I think uncovering those details with the team,
and truly gaining an understanding of the project together
can help a team to succeed when it comes
to generating creative approaches to that project,
to planning the effort,
to managing the client's expectations,
and honestly, to just simply staying
within scope and not going over budget.
It's also a great time to just let the team
ask questions about the project.
To ask questions about the client
or the client's organization.
To really dig in on the scope
and the related estimates of that scope.
Maybe even to think about the resourcing plan
and so much more.
I guess I'm just a big believer
in transferring knowledge to the entire team
so that the PM is not the only person
who holds all the details.
To me, that's what makes teams successful.
And that's what makes projects successful.
Now the second kickoff that I would conduct
is one with my client or stakeholders included.
So I just want to mention here
that the way that you work,
the types of projects that you work on,
the organization you work in, and even your scopes
will likely dictate how you plan and facilitate
your kickoff meetings with stakeholders.
So I'm gonna offer two options here
and you can pick and adapt which one
makes the most sense to you.
The first is a standard kickoff
and the second is a creative kickoff
or what I call a creative kickoff.
The standard kickoff would likely be an hour long meeting
maybe 90 minutes,
where you have your team and your stakeholders
attend a session to discuss the goals, scope,
and details of how you'll manage the project.
It's super straightforward and can be more of
an introduction of teams, a review of details,
with a little bit of Q and A, or discussion involved.
Now the creative kickoff would be more in-depth
and it might be more like an extended workshop
where you cover the goals, scope,
and details of how you manage the project.
But you also might discuss how you'll
meet those goals together.
And even start to engage your stakeholders
in generating ideas, discussing preferences
when it comes to that execution,
and honestly, just making them feel like they're a part
of the overall process of making a thing,
because you are gonna need them involved in that process.
So I've planned a lot of these workshops
with teams and they can last a few hours.
They can also last up to a few days.
In my experience, they've been really helpful
in building team relationships between agencies and clients
and to showcase the talent and expertise of your team
which can kind of be exciting and fun.
They can also be really helpful to project managers,
managers, and team leads,
because you get to observe interactions
and note things like risks.
You find who the prickly personalities are.
You can look for and suss out
out of scope ideas to squash them right away.
You can even find possible process points
that you might need to implement
in order to manage the things that you've observed.
I think no matter how you handle your kickoff,
or kickoffs, you wanna be sure that you're doing
the following things that are gonna show up on screen:
First, introduce your teams to one another.
After all, you never want to assume
that the folks you're working with know one another.
Or that they even know what each other does.
So make some time to get personal
and get to know the folks who'll be a part of the project.
Go around the room and have individuals introduce themselves
and talk about what they do
and how they'll contribute to the project;
that's meaningful.
Then you wanna make the project goals crystal clear.
Start off on the right foot.
Starting off on the right foot means
that everyone involved in the project
knows not only what you're building, but why.
Getting goals out in the open immediately
will clear up any misconceptions
and it'll help you when you're further
in the project and need to make decisions.
You should know these goals going into the meeting,
so I'd probably present them
and have your stakeholders confirm them here.
That might turn into a discussion about those goals
or even a change to them, which is fine, right?
Trust me, you want that to happen early on,
like at your kickoff meeting,
rather than at your first deliverable review.
(coughs)
Next, you'll wanna review the project scope in detail.
I've found that doing this in conjunction with the goals
will really cement everyone's understanding
of what will and will not be done in the project.
And that's gonna be important for you
when you're deep in the project
and a stakeholder asks for something that's completely
out of left field and out of scope.
If they attended this meeting
and they confirmed the scope with you,
you can point back to it.
Not in a, "I told you so," kind of way, as much as a,
"Hey, you know we discussed this and have it documented,"
so that's the project scope and it's not a part of it.
You get it.
I don't know about you,
but I like having backup to those tricky conversations.
And this is a strong way to get those boundaries set
from day one.
All right, so next I would discuss any possible risks
that might exist on the project.
Sometimes those are tough to uncover,
but you'll likely know some basic risks
coming into the project.
Mention those things.
And maybe even ask the question like,
"Are there any projects or tasks that we should know about,
that could impact our project?"
Or maybe, "Are there any events, technology,
or people that we should be aware of going into the project
that could have an impact on what we do?"
Just opening up the conversation
and making it known that you're looking for those things,
will show that you're doing a great job
by thinking through every possible thing,
in order to keep the project on track from day one.
You want to build that trust.
Next, I think you should talk about how ya talk!
It sounds silly, I know.
But ya have to discuss how you'll communicate
during the project.
If you wanna run weekly status meetings, you should.
Talk about that.
And talk about who will need to be in the status meetings.
If you'll be using TeamGantt, you should. (laughs)
Talk about it and talk about how it'll be used
and what the expectations are of everyone on the team.
You get the idea here.
Maybe even discuss your communications plan.
And hey, if you want more information
on things like status reports and communications plans,
or even free templates for those things,
check out the Coffee with Brett playlist on YouTube.
We've got episodes on those and we've got links
to free templates, which is gonna help you.
All right, so now the next one is really important
and it's about the process and the plan.
(coughs)
You might not even have a full plan
at the point of a kickoff meeting,
and that's completely fine.
If that's the case at a minimum,
you wanna talk about the high level project timing
and what you know your team will deliver.
And if those deliverables
will include rounds of feedback and revisions or approvals.
Get granular on the details of that process.
If there's anything that I've personally learned
as a PM working with paying clients,
it's that they ignore the details
around feedback timing and volume.
Because honestly, they just wanna get it right
and they don't care how long it takes or how much it costs.
M-mm, not so true about that second part.
So it's fair for them to wanna get it right,
but you need to make them aware
of the boundaries of your scope,
because that's a huge detail that can impact
your project budget as well as your timeline.
So you need to suss out who your stakeholders will be,
how you prefer to receive feedback,
and how many times you're scoped
to revise your deliverables.
There's no better place than in the kickoff meeting
where everyone's present and part
of the conversation to do that.
Again, use this session to set those expectations.
All right, so next you just wanna talk about next steps.
I mean, you should do this in any meeting also.
But in this instance you have an opportunity to show
what work is coming and what to expect from that work.
And lastly, make some space and time for Q and A,
and generate some excitement around the project.
I really think the kickoff meeting
is a great opportunity to share information,
set expectations, answer questions,
or even clear confusion.
And honestly, get everyone pumped to make something awesome.
Of course, you're gonna uncover a lot more ideas, questions,
and even issues through the course of any project.
But taking the opportunity to get everyone on the same page
at the beginning will help you to get everyone aligned
and excited from day one.
So tell me, what's your kickoff process look like?
Are there any aspects of your kickoff process or agenda
that I've missed here?
Or do you do any fun exercises in your kickoffs?
I have to say I'm a huge fan of games and exercises
to really uncover differences, to generate ideas
and even gain alignment in my meetings,
but I don't have time (chuckles) to cover those things now.
If you want more on that, and maybe another episode on that,
drop a note in the comments.
But right now I'm gonna get back to my coffee.
But before I do that, if you enjoyed this video,
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Thanks so much and have a good one!
♪ Hey ♪
♪ Do-Do-Do-DoDo-Do-Do-Do-DoDo ♪