Nailing your project kick-off

Pre-work

A project kick-off meeting shouldn’t be an “information broadcast.” If you need to share background information in advance, do it on a shared document like a Confluence page. Project kick-off meetings should actively involve the team and anyone else who’s a stakeholder or whose work will be affected by the project.

Set up a meeting agenda to keep the meeting streamlined and efficient, try making a list of questions you want to ask your team. (Even better, send those questions to them ahead of the meeting so they’ll have time to think about their answers.) Prepare some answers based on questions you think your team might have.

Structuring the meeting

How you structure your meeting agenda depends on the project, but key elements should include the 5 W’s, or who, what, where, when, why and how: 

• Introductions
• What’s the background of the project
• Why are you doing it 
• What is the project scope 
• What’s the action plan 
• Who’s doing what 
• How are you going to work together
• What does success look like 

Make sure you also cover what the agenda for the kick-off meeting with your team will look like and if there are any questions or anything that hasn’t been discussed.

What’s the difference between a project kick-off meeting with your team and with customers or clients?

It could be that the project you’re about to kick-off is internal, such as a new document management system rollout or the build of a new design feature. Or you’re about to start an external project for a client or customer. In both cases, the initial kick-off meeting has the same basic function; it’s a meeting to set the tone, style, and vision for the project as a whole, and to establish common goals, tasks, and timelines with your project team.

For client work, your project kick-off meeting will include introducing the team working on the project, talking the client through the project stages, and agreeing on how to effectively work together to successfully deliver the project. It’s a chance for your team to get a stronger contextual grounding in the project, to show their understanding and enthusiasm for the project, and set the stage for a positive working relationship with your client. 

What’s involved in a kick-off meeting?

So you’ve done your preplanning and you’re ready to start your kick-ass project kick-off meeting with your team. You’re so organized! Every project is different, but we recommend to trying to cover off these topics in your meeting:

Introductions

Get the ball rolling. Don’t assume everyone knows each other, so let everyone introduce themselves, their role in the project, and what they’ll be delivering. Bonus points if you can think of a fun and quick icebreaker.

Statement of work, project scope, timeline, and deliverables

Out of everything you’re discussing during the project kick-off meeting, this is one of the most important parts. It solidifies what’s involved in the project and whether or not everyone is on the same page. 

The statement of work you submitted to the client describes the work you’ll deliver and by what deadline. 

The project scope includes a detailed description of project deliverables and the work needed to accomplish them. 

The project timeline is an overview of what is expected to be delivered and when. This can be as detailed as needed for your project. 

Deliverables are the actual items you will send to your customer or client, and they’re usually noted on the timeline.

Tracking progress/milestones and communicating them

During your kick-off meeting, establish a baseline for how you plan to share progress with your stakeholders or client. You can use a status report to show how the project is tracking on budget, tasks, milestones, and timeline. The status report should be available to all stakeholders and anyone whose work might be affected by the project, to make sure everyone is aware of the progress (or delays). For client projects, it’s important that your client agrees with the level of detail they will receive in the status reports to ensure easier invoicing and payments.

Tools and methods

Put together a set of collaboration tools you’ll be using during the project and decide with your team how you’ll be using them to communicate. How will you be sharing your status reports and other files? Aligning on these things early on will help to keep the project’s communication streamlined. It’s also helpful a to make sure your team or client can access whatever tools you decide to use to keep informed about the project. Some project tools you may use include:

• A work management system to track items in progress. Examples include Jira, Basecamp, or Asana.
• A shared document system to make sure everyone (including your client) has access to important project documents and information. Examples include Microsoft docs, Google docs, or you can use a document management system that has built-in hierarchy and organization tools like Confluence.
• A communication tool like email or Slack so that the teams can stay in touch about any questions or needs that emerge. 

For client work, there may be other tools you’ll need access to before you can started. Think design assets like logos, fonts, or style guides, templates, databases, logins (to CMS, social, analytics, etc), access to your client’s intranet, and the correct details for invoicing.

Risk and issue management

Communicate with your team (and with the client) how you want to identify and respond to issues together. Even with the best planning, sometimes unexpected things pop up on a project. Good project risk management for both internal and external client projects means that you and your team will be continuously identifying, analyzing, prioritizing, and mitigating risks that could get in the way of delivering a project on time and on budget. This can include team members keeping a close eye on their billable hours and keeping on top of upcoming software updates or changes to technical tools used during the project.

It’s also a good idea to ask in your client kick-off meeting what their attitude is toward change, for instance when it comes to wiggle room in the budget.