Template for good kickoff meetings

This is a short blog on how to run a project kickoff meeting. These one to two hour meetings can setup a project for success.

First up, a few baselines:

• Make sure everyone involved (meaning also all stakeholders) are in the same room at the same moment
• The goal of the meeting is to introduce all project members and stakeholder to each-other, understand responsibilities, and of course; get a general understanding of the project. Next, the project lead should explain what success looks like. Lastly, this is also a chance to define an initial way of working together.
• One person, often the project lead, is responsible for facilitating the meeting. That means inviting the right people, setting an agenda, booking a suited space, setting the context in the meeting and guiding discussions in the meeting.
• A kickoff meeting can set the course and the tone for the rest of the project. Meaning that if done right, it can contribute enormously to the success of the project itself. And done badly, the project kickoff meeting can destroy any chance of success before the project has even started.

Now that those things are clear, here’s an agenda template you can use.

Introduction using a game, where participants answer (on post-its) 4 simple questions, that are hung in the room on big sheets of paper:

• What was your first job?
• If you could get any skill right now, what would it be?
• What’s your guilty pleasure song?
• What is your biggest strength?

This exercise sets the scene and forces participants to move around right at the start of the meeting, whilst getting to know others.

I’m a big fan of the Why-How-What model, which was made popular by Simon Sinek. The project lead presents this part.

• Start with the why. This explains the reasoning why we want to take on this project and sets the context for the meeting. It should also create buy-in from the team, as they see the bigger picture.
• Continue to the how. This should set a high-level scope of the project, explain the approach and indicate when the project is successful.
• End with the What. This is all about the scope and timeline of the project. The scope should be flexible enough for the team to indicate the details, which means they have total freedom with the actual implementation.

After this topic, the project lead should set the expectations of the team(s) or individuals, which they can discuss.

This is the end of the meeting itself, but the beginning of much more; discussions, brainstorm, planning, etc. are all things you can do now. But at least, everyone is on the same page.

The project lead should sent meeting minutes to all participants, to remind them of the decisions made in the meeting and of possible next steps required from them.