Kick off meeting is by far the most important meeting for the project manager. This is the only chance to make the first impression and best opportunity to set up the rules and expectations you have towards the delivery team.
Furthermore, it is probably the only situation the whole project team will be in the same room with project sponsor and all of the SC members. A great opportunity to emphasize the importance of project goals and keep the team focused on them!
On some project there may be two kick off Meetings. First one internal and second one with the client/vendor.
If you have some confidential or sensitive information about the project that you don’t want to share with the other side, organize the internal Kick Off Meeting.
It is a good practice to divide Kick Off Meeting in two separate parts.
On first part you want to have Sponsor, all SC members and whole project delivery team. If the delivery team is too big, then I suggest to have the core delivery team, team leaders and key users on this first part.
First part should last around thirty minutes. Twenty minutes for the presentation and ten minutes for the Sponsor to emphasize project goals, expectations and importance..
You should present the high level information about the project in around twenty minutes. You should have slide for each of the following:
- Project goals,
- Project Schedule,
- High level scope and deliverables with milestones and dates,
- Financial plan and expenditures during the project,
- Project team structure,
- High probability/impact risks with mitigation plan,
- Success criterion and
- Decisions to be made
I usually add the slide with the list of all planned SC meetings with dates and topics they will cover. More on this is covered on “managing SC meetings” article.
I strongly suggest you use this slide deck for future SC meetings. By doing this you will have a structure for the future SC meetings. Further more, SC members will be familiar with what you will present and in which way. You can add a slide or two depending on the needs of the specific situation you have on the project. However, this slide deck should cover 90% of the SC meeting presentation.
The remaining ten minutes should be allocated to Sponsor to deliver the message about the project importance, reasons for investment and project goals. He should close the first part of the Kick Off.
Then, there should be a 15 minutes pause, and the opportunity for casual chat between high level managers and project team.
The second part of Kick Off is usually without Sponsor and SC members. If they want to participate even better. This part should last around one to two hours, depending on the details you want to cover and of course the complexity of the project.
Cover the topics from the first part with much more details. You must add the detailed plan slide and schedule for the next couple of weeks. That way the team would know their immediate tasks and what is expected of them. And, very important, you want to use this opportunity to share the rules of engagement, your expectations from the team, what you will not tolerate, etc.
After the kick off, plan relaxed group activity so the team members can get to know each other better. Some large space allocated just for this purpose with some drinks, light food or some other similar setting should be enough. Bear in mind that people should be able to freely approach and talk with each other. Hence, Avoid lunch with tables where everyone is sitting down.
It would be great if sponsor and SC members could join as well.
This “Team Building” should be no more than two hours long and preferably not too late during the day.
If it is your first Kick off, prepare well, collect all the details, practice day or two before the meeting and you will be OK. Remember, good start will significantly increase the likelihood of project success.
