Scheduling a Kickoff

When should the team and stakeholders be brought together to assure everyone is on the same page?

Project management dogma would suggest the obvious time to schedule a project kickoff is at the beginning of the project. When are the not-so-obvious times?

Most projects begin long before they begin. They start as an idea floated up to management or floating down from management. When projects are initially authorized to pursue—this is a great time for the first project kickoff. The audience will likely be small, just the sponsor (or sponsors), the project manager, and the core team. The goal of this kickoff is to initiate the effort and review the goals and what is known about the potential project. This serves to guide the team as they try to capture the scope, schedule and resource targets (not estimates yet) of the initiative.

When the project definition is complete and approved, teams next move into planning, trying to develop credible estimates of the time and resources needed to pursue the effort. When plans are completed and approved and the project is officially given permission to start, it is often prudent to schedule another kickoff meeting to refine expectations of what the project is and is not. Attendees might include extended members of the team who were uninvolved in planning, key stakeholders, the project manager, the core team (who participated in definition and planning) and the project’s sponsors. The goal of this is to establish an initial understanding of the project goals and timeline as it is currently understood.

There are sometimes special moments in a project’s lifetime that suggest a need for revisiting the kickoff meeting. These include:

• Whenever there is a significant increase in the project team—an internal kickoff to orient a bunch of new staff or contractors helps to welcome them to the project and provides an opportunity to introduce them to project culture and norms. What tools will the project use? What is the current timeline? What are the project goals? Think of a time you joined a project mid-stream and had to figure this out on your own. A quick kickoff might have saved you time.
• Whenever there is a significant change in the original schedule, scope, or resource boundaries of the project—these might result from changer orders or discoveries as the project unfolds. Always good to let the team and key stakeholders know to update their expectations.
• Whenever there is a change in key stakeholders—we go to a lot of trouble to orient and keep stakeholders informed about project goals so that we can establish and manage expectations, but this is not a “one and done” proposition. Whenever key stakeholders change, project managers should consider a small “kickoff” or orientation to welcome the new stakeholders and assure that their project expectations are aligned with reality.
• Whenever there is a change in sponsorship—an effective working relationship between the project manager and the sponsor is essential to project success. When a project is mid-flight and there is a change in sponsor, it can be easy for the project manager to be caught up in day to day operations and delay or omit orienting the new sponsor to the project. Rebuilding that relationship and confirming a common understanding of the project goals and status is important.
• Whenever the project manager turns over—a new project manager must be oriented to the project and the project team, stakeholders, and sponsors must be oriented to the current state of the project and introduced to the new project manager.

Whether you call it a “kickoff”, an “orientation”, or just pursuit of robust communication, a rookie project manager move is to treat the initial meeting as a checklist item to be accomplished rather than a vital ongoing effort to manage expectations of key individuals. Don’t limit yourself to a single “kickoff” at the beginning of a project. Be alert for any significant changes in the project definition and the project players (team, PM, stakeholders, and sponsors) and recognize that keeping them all rowing in the same direction will save time and energy in the long run.