Process > Kick-off Meeting

Nothing helps a project get headed down the right path than a well-planned and professionally organized project kickoff. The five-step process outlined here will help insure that the customer and your delivery organization are of the same mind as you start your engines.

Few project leaders want to spend the up-front time and money to actually put together a risk management plan, but it truly needs to be your first step in effectively managing risks on your project. Your planning needs to include four steps in order to be effective and in order to be a "sellable" tool in your PM process.

Nothing takes the place of solid work experience. So one PM decided to reach out to her colleagues and gather their everyday thoughts and insights into what they have learned over the years in working with different leadership styles. These important questions and answers continue that valuable research.

Step right up and see how to kick your success rate up a notch. Here's a hint: You can get a leg up if you get out of the starting blocks without losing your footing. In other words, kick it off right.

There are four main qualities that the remote project manager must possess to effectively manage his or her projects and enhance the likelihood of project success. Do you have what it takes?

What do you do to try to mend a strained relationship with a customer? Based on this writer's experience, three actionable responses may make the difference.

A snip here and a stitch there. Let out a bit over here. Don't suck in your stomach! There, you have a kick-off meeting fit for a virtual team, no matter how spread out it has become.

How do you lead and develop resources across the miles? Having a strengthened project team can be hard enough if everyone is located in the same location, but how do you ensure success when the project is global in scope? In this article, we explore different aspects of team and individual development and leadership--and some of the specific challenges that are introduced in a global project.

There is no such thing as a perfect methodology. Each has advantages and disadvantages. Each has situations they handle well and situations where their use will spell disaster. Unfortunately, most organizations choose simplicity over common sense. A better way begins with some questions.

How do we ensure that we aren’t running around reprimanding team members and shouting “No!” to everything that comes out of the customer’s mouth? Here are three steps to set scope management in motion and ensure that it’s a positive for the project.

How do the rules around communication change when we add the global element? When we add a global perspective into the picture, things can get a lot more complicated. The physical distance can be a big part of that--as can time, language and culture. In this article, we look at how communication needs to adjust on a global project in order to remain effective.

As with so many things, the first step of a project is probably the most important. A solid plan, well thought-out and well communicated, is the cornerstone of your project's success. Without it, the walls are certain to come tumbling down.

As if building a high-performing team wasn’t hard enough, a global project brings an array of additional challenges, from time zone conflicts to cultural differences. Here, a practitioner who has led a number of successful global projects shares 10 tips for leading a virtual team.

Frustrated by project charter meetings that feature overly textual, often generic descriptions of what the team can expect and how to accomplish it, a project manager applied the agile concept of User Stories to better describe project interactions and inject more real-world meaning into a kickoff document.

If you’re the project manager and you find yourself in a nightmare situation where your customer is out of the picture, what do you do? Performing the following actions are probably in your best interest if you hope to either salvage the project--or save your own skin if things go horribly wrong.

From kickoff to closeout, every project has its ups and downs. Project managers who have a handle on the five stages of team development can foster greater collaboration, decision making and overall performance. In part two of this series, we look at an example of a team progressing through all five stages.

On bid projects, a poorly managed transition from the sales team to the service delivery team can put the engagement at risk even before the kickoff meeting. Here is advice on what, how and when information should be shared during and after the sales phase in order to align expectations.

Here's a checklist of important areas to cover during your project kickoff meeting:

Cognitive mapping software automates processes for graphically diagramming words, ideas and tasks, which can give project teams and managers added insight in planning, transforming the way they make decisions and solve problems. Here’s how it helped an AT&T program manager optimize a complex IT project.

How do you keep your team focused on your project as its primary priority? This writer has found that following these four practical steps and processes works well at keeping his project at the forefront of his team members' minds.

Starting a team? Time to brush up on your rhyming skills. Here's how to make sense of all the forming before the storming and norming get out of control. Do you have what it takes? Read on.

You're trying to ensure two things at the end of the project: the customer has what they want and you have what you want. Here we look at five crucial steps to closing down the project.

You should never need a reminder that we are all part of the same team. But in global teams, the need for effective teambuilding is even more important. Here we provide some tips on how to ensure that people are perceived as--and more importantly identify themselves as--part of the overall project team.

Portfolio Management is about managing the flow of projects through their transitions into and out of the basket of projects being pursued by the organization--and thus integral to the activities found in the PMO. In order to keep PPM processes easy to understand and implement, they will be presented in terms of pre-, active and post-portfolio activities--which we explore here.

How a project starts often determines how it ends. The kickoff meeting could be the most important one you hold.

Politics are never fun on a project and a PM’s life is always easier when they don’t have to deal with them, but that’s just not realistic. By recognizing that fact and counteracting “bad” politics with “good”, you can go a long way to neutralizing the threat to your project. Learn how you can leverage politics to your benefit and have a significant advantage.

Collocated teams are the heart and soul of agile project management, but there's one small dilemma: The world’s supply of human talent is not aligned for a PM model based on collocated project teams; the marketplace is better aligned for one based on virtual teams. So how do you adapt the agile project management model?

Some RFPs are bad…really bad. It makes you wonder how clear the purchasing organization is on what they are trying to achieve. Here, we look at the process that an organization goes through in preparing and issuing an Request For Proposal--and identify some best practices.

A project failure is seldom caused by unknown or mysterious factors. In fact, failure is often predictable based on symptoms and warning signs. And it can be prevented by following a disciplined approach to recovery. Here, an experienced project recovery specialist shares his methodology for fixing a failing initiative.

Why involve project management before there’s a project? Customer expectations are often out of whack before the services part of the organization ever gets its hands on the project. Here we look at the root of the problem--and provide some solutions.

It's important to clarify the purpose and status reporting expectations early in the project. Here, we share a sample integration management cadence for a large project or program that effectively balances the time with the administrative overhead.

There is a subtle but important difference between measuring outcomes and measuring people. So what should we measure? Here are five measures that can bring about extraordinary results.

You wouldn't pack your parka for a trip to rainforest any more than you would bring sandals on your trip up Mount Everest. Your organization climate is just as important in how you plan for and handle projects and teams.

From analysis to restructuring, control to closure, a temperamental project is a tough task to swallow. This story will highlight some techniques and tools to use in order to begin controlling a troubled project.

Should project teams stop conducting post-mortems and wasting time by facilitating lessons-learned workshops? When this writer first heard these words, he thought it would’ve been considered blasphemy. Then he thought about it...