I have seen different practices in organizations about conducting project kickoff meeting.
Some PMs conduct after creation of project plan, while others create after creating project charter, identifying stakeholders and before creating a project plan.
What are the pre-requisites for this meeting and when we should conduct it?
Sometimes it may happen that resources need to be hired for the project and need to conduct the meeting with few available resources. What is your opinion on this situation? Saving Changes...
Kick off meetings should be held after the completion and approval of all elements of the management project plan. Prior to that any kick off meeting would not be productive. This is for a single phase project. For multiple phase projects, it can held prior to the start of each phase, it depends on the complexity of the project and how it is managed.
As Anemu says, the kickoff meeting’s agenda is very important. In particular, you need to know what you want to achieve with the kickoff meeting – then you’ll know the best time to hold the meeting.
For example, my current project spans multiple years, and involves resources from multiple divisions within my organization, as well as several large outside vendors. Since the project was so complex, the primary goals of our kickoff meeting was to make everyone aware of the project’s purpose and goals, and to answer any questions people had. We didn’t have a project plan finalized when we held the kickoff meeting.
Kick-off meeting is the 1st meeting to be conducted after stakeholders for a particular package are finalized. The most important part of the meeting is Agenda. Depending on the clarity available at that time prepare the agenda and try to achieve respective goals in the meeting. Please note that it's not necessary to finalise everything in kick-off meeting but all the requirements are to be discussed and how to proceed further to be finalized; like it's not necessary to finalise project plan in kick-off meeting but discussion on this to be happen and the meeting to finalise the project plan is to be fixed and how the monitoring will be done to be finalized. Even if there is no clarity let the project kick-off meeting happen first and proceed further. If there's clarity then try to finalise the things in the meeting. It also depends on the size of project and package also.
Dear best time to conduct kick-off meeting is after project charter development and stakeholders identification.
Thank you Nian for your inputs! Saving Changes...
Deepa KalangiManager, Program Management, Author, Trainer| CVS HealthCharlotte, NC, United States
I held kick off's right after my Initiation phase artifacts- RACI, Project Charter, high level schedule, Initial risk assessment. Not all artifacts, in my experience were mandatory based on the organizational processes, but for sure RACI and PC. Kick off's are best when done right after a RACI is established and can review a PC with the stakeholders and level set on the goals and expectations with the high level business requirements. Saving Changes...
Ramachandran SwaminathanRegional Delivery Manager| Oracle Consulting IndiaBangalore, Karnataka, India
Hi Sonali,
I think you have got lot well thought opinions and advice in this matter. Just thought of adding my two cents here if it is worthwhile.
I my opinion, we should conduct the kick-off after identifying the stakeholders and always before creating the project plan. As you know, the PM needs lot of inputs for the project plan and we need to identify who those members are and what they will do etc before creating the plan. Also from a Financials and milestone perspective kick-off is very important. Once you do the formal kick-off, it means that the "Financial Meter" for project has started running and you have started consuming the project budget. In such a case project plan has to come after kick-off meeting to correctly charge the effort/money spent in creating the project plan. Remember, the project plan is a deliverable of the project and we need kick-off the project before creating the plan Saving Changes...
The best time to hold the kick-off meeting depends on the organization. In some organizations, the kick-off meeting is held after the Project Charter is approved and stakeholders identification.
Here are some agenda items to consider:
1. Where we are now/how we got where we are today
2. Customer expectations
3. Budget Estimates
4. Review – Deliverables
5. Preliminary Schedule
6. Resources
7. Stakeholders
8. Next Steps Saving Changes...
Deat Sonali
A project kickoff meeting is the first meeting between a project team and the sponsor of a project. It’ll take place prior to the end of planning phase and before the start of the execution phase.
The main purpose of the kick-off meeting is to ensure that everyone has a good understanding of the project, understand what needs to be done, and agree on how to work together. Saving Changes...
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