10 Questions To Consider Before Project Kick Off

Meredith @ The Moat
Aug 8, 2017 · 2 min read

As keen as you and your colleagues may be to jump straight into delivery, being clear on how you intend to run the project and sharing it with your team upfront will put you in good stead for the full project lifecycle.

Here follows 10 key considerations to help lay the solid foundations for running your project remotely. These questions, regardless of your methodology of choice; agile, lean, kanban, waterfall — will help form the basis of a project process.

1. When will project meetings take place? Take into account time zones and other commitments, whether it’s your weekly progress update or daily stand-up, find a convenient time for all and try and stick to it.

2. How will project management meetings take place? Have you identified a video calling tool that works for everyone (Hangouts? Slack?) or will you dial into a conference line? Check everyone has the necessary apps/numbers to join.

3. What’s the work/deliverable structure? Will everyone be working towards the same milestone at the same time? What are the phases of work? Are you working sprints? If so, how long is each sprint?

4. How will you book resources? Is the team ready? Do you need to talk to the resourcing manager to make sure? What third parties are required and have terms been agreed?

5. How will you assign tasks? How will the team know what they are doing at a granular, task level? What are they doing tomorrow? Consider using a tool like Trello, Basecamp or Asana to assign tasks and communicate deadlines.

6. How will you manage change requests and re-prioritisation? Will you swap out one feature for another or can you extend timeline and increase budget to suit? Who will sign off change requests?

7. How will you track budget and time ?Do the team need to submit timesheets? Are you able to sign-off on costs, or will you need to run these past someone more senior?

8. How will you document progress? Where will you keep a record of project status and process, how often will you update it and who is on the distribution list?

9. How will you show progress? How often will you be sharing deliverables for testing/feedback? How will you distribute to the wider team? If you’re working on a physical product, the logistics here will require some thought and planning when working remotely.

10. How often and when will you need stakeholder sign-off? Everyone is busy — let stakeholders and clients know what you’ll need from them during the project and when.


I find it’s great to have a process section during project kick-off meetings. Come armed with answers to these questions, talk them through with your team and be clear what everyone’s responsibilities are.

Remember, processes should be tested and adaptable — I’m a great believer that you cannot apply the same process to each project.

The Moat. X

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Meredith @ The Moat

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Creating a reassuring blog about remote project management: https://readthemoat.com/

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