Transcription
Are you starting a project and are wondering what exactly do you need to put in your kickoff meeting agenda? So guess what? I have your back, because in this video, this is exactly what we're going to talk about: all the items you need to have in your kickoff meeting agenda and all the critical components too. So stay tuned.
And if you stay tuned to the end of this video, I have something really special for you, because if you're wanting to know how to do well at the beginning of your projects, I have for you what to do well during your projects by understanding why projects fail. So stay tuned to the end and I'll give you all that info.
Hi. If you're new here, welcome. My name is Adriana Girdler, and on this channel, you're going to get the best career and project-management advice. So please consider subscribing, as it helps us grow this awesome community. Now, I know you're here for the project kickoff meeting agenda, so I'm really excited about this. Give it a like, and let's get to it.
What is a kickoff meeting? So before I can even get you into the agenda of this meeting, let's just get all on the same page of exactly what it is. It's the first official meeting between the project manager and the project team, and this meeting is all about bringing everyone up to speed to get synced with what exactly everyone has to do, the charter, any key pieces of information. So in essence, everyone can start working on the project.
Agenda item one: opening remarks. All right, why are we here? Literally, that's the opening remarks: why are we here? I actually put that on a slide itself, and that's usually a trigger because, I'll invite sponsors or steering-committee members or really important senior executives to either, A, come into the meeting if it's a live meeting in order to launch everything and explain why everybody is here. Now, if individuals are really busy, I've actually videotaped senior individuals as well and played that. Now, if you're virtual, it's super easy. You just haven't joined the call. But again, why are we here? Those opening remarks is the most important thing. People need to understand the why before they can get into detail and tasks and the nitty-gritty, and it coming from senior people is critical, because it just shows how important your project is.
Agenda item number two: meeting logistics. I always do this after we do the opening remarks: why are we here? Because now I have to set everything up to ensure that our meeting runs smoothly, because your meeting is going to be a minimum of two hours, maybe even longer than that, depending on all the activities that you are going to be doing and I'm going to be sharing with you in a moment. So on that note, there's some very specific things that we're going to do from a logistical standpoint.
First and foremost, team introduction. You need to find out if everybody knows each other, because sometimes in projects, particularly when you're doing cross-departmental, some individuals may not know each other. So it's your job prior to this kickoff meeting that you find out if everybody knows each other. If you have one person who does not each other, you still need to do this team introduction. So with team introductions, be fun with it. Do a fun icebreaker. I have really cool videos on icebreaker from a virtual perspective, which you can easily take and make it live as well. I'll put the link for you under this video so you can check it out. But it really is important to ensure that... This is your team. They're all going to be working together quite heavily. So you want to make sure that they all know each other, and that simple introduction is a great way to kick off your logistics.
Meeting rules: this is another important part under meeting logistics. So your meeting rules are just that: how are you going to be running this meeting? And it's really important, because this is not just about this meeting that you're doing right now, which is a kickoff. It's going to be all of your meetings. So I always like to do it, because it sets up accountability and expectations from the get-go. You're starting immediately, day one, "Here's what I expect from you." That is really important from an accountability perspective down the road. So I actually have a video that I did on that. I'll put that under this video here, that link, so you can check that out.
Meeting reminders. All right, this is where you're going to talk about all the housekeeping stuff. It goes hand-in-hand with the meeting rule. I usually do the rules and then I go to meeting reminders. And what are some of those meeting reminders? Those are washroom breaks, because again, you're probably having a much longer meeting. You just want to let people know how are you going to be doing things in regards to washroom breaks. I also like to interject to other things, like if you have a hot issue. We're going to have parking lots. I talk about timeouts as well, which is a really great technique that you're asking for permission immediately. "By the way, I'm not only your facilitator project manager. I am your time keeper. Do I have your permission to time you out so we can keep on track?" That is a really great technique and I highly recommend you add it at this section. I also have toys. I talk about toys. Now this is great for live meetings, and even if you have virtual meetings, there's virtual things that you can do to help people really with learning and creativity, because when I'm in these types of meetings, I'm making them think as well. And toys are great because there are different types of learners. There's visual learners, audio learners, and learners who do with touch, and toys are just a great way to break things up and ensure that not only are we just talking about business, but we're having a little bit of fun in it as well.
And last under this agenda two section is going to be project expectations. This is like a mini exercise, and what I really love about it is it gives me so much insight. So I usually ask individuals, "What are you expecting from this project? What are you really looking forward to? What concerns do you have?" Now, depending on time and exactly are you virtual or are you live, I will break people up into groups, into teams, I'll even do breakout rooms, and I'll ask them to give me their pros and cons or what they're excited about, maybe what they're concerned about, come back and we can talk about it. I get so much insight, which allows for me to correct assumptions right away, or to highlight things that I now need to start working on, that there's no way I would have gotten in any other format, but now I'm getting it right up-front at the beginning of the project, in order to ensure that we're going to be successful. Now, another tip and trick I highly recommend is don't skip this. So if you're really tight for time, just ask people, what are they really looking forward to with this project? It just gets everyone on a really positive note versus asking them what their concerns are, which is a little more negative. So again, meeting logistics, item number two, really, really important to get all those items done.
Agenda item number three: charter review and Q&A. Okay, this is why you brought everyone together. You would have done all your prep work, all your charter work. You can check out my videos on charter. Just YouTube search "Adriana Girdler charter", and that will come up for you so you can check that out. This is really important. This is giving everyone the heartbeat of what's going on, the expectations, and you want to ensure you give people time to ask questions. Why? Because if you know me and you've seen my previous videos in the charter, the end of this kickoff meeting, people are going to sign off that they are in agreement with what is expected of them and the deliverable that is going on. So it's really important that this is done and should be immediate. Now, you want to do it as a preread, because reviewing your charter line-by-line without people reading it before, that can easily take two, three, four hours. So you don't want to do it that way, because people have a lot of questions. So I do it in advance. That becomes really helpful, and I just highlight the areas that people have questions with. Definite, definite agenda item number three. You cannot skip this. Do not pass Go. Give it out as a preread. Did I tell you how important doing the charter is?
Agenda item number four: project ways of working. Again, you're bringing everyone together for the first time. This is your first official meeting. How awesome that you did the charter, but now, since everyone's in the same room, how are we going to work together? So what are some of those things that you're even going to consider having in there? Well, for me, I for sure do my project communication plan. This is a tool that I use, so it just outlines all the communication channels that I'm going to have with my project team. Really important so they understand what's expected. I also do a SharePoint site for projects. It's a central location that I use to house all of the documents, and I set that up so that everyone understands and knows this is where they're going to upload all of their documents, and this is where they're going to go to get anything for the project. Please do not save anything on your hard drive. Oh my goodness, don't do that. And you're going to have version control as well, which also comes down to file management. You want to let them know what your expectation is with documents. I like to do my version control with dates. So if anyone makes a change, just change the date for the day that you made the change, and then everybody knows that that's the latest version, because you know how terrible it is to work off the wrong version? And I know a lot of you have. I have. I learned by my mistakes. You have to do version control with the date.
You're also going to have some other things like how are we going to immediately communicate if I need to reach you now, because I have a burning, urgent issue that has to be addressed? Are you going to be using Microsoft Teams, posts and chat? Are you going to use Slack? Do I text you? These are the things that you're really going to say, "This is how we're going to work." You're also going to talk about the frequency of your core team meetings or the project team meetings. How are we all going to move forward? The worst thing you can do is not set that out, because then people are going to walk away, and then when you do finally set up the expectation, "What? We're meeting every week? You never told us that." You need to tell them now, because you can negotiate everything with your project team, because they understand the full package because you just reviewed the charter and now you're going through all those expectations. So I also, last but not least, have an expectation list. Here's what I expect for them in regards to behavior, because that's really important. I've been on lots of projects where there's been poor behavior and I see the repetition of that poor behavior. So I call it out and I put it under a list of expectations and I actually get the team to contribute to that too, and we all agree to it. So then now I have a really good baseline document that I can call people out on because we've all agreed to it. So these are just some really important project ways of working to help you really be an awesome project manager and keep your team accountable.
Agenda item number five: WBS creation. Huh? What? What's a WBS? It's a work breakdown structure. It is a tool and technique that we use as project managers. When you have something really high level and complex, you need to break it down. It's what we call buckets. Very hierarchal. Guess what? My same advice to you: go search "Adriana Girdler WBS". I have a video that breaks that down so you can check it out and get some more info. But here's the perfect opportunity to use your kickoff meeting, to validate either, A, maybe the high level WBS that you created walking into this meeting, or B, do it with your team and get them to break down some tasks associated with it. Really powerful to actually do it with your team, the B part. Get it prepped, go into it and get an exercise around that. So it's interesting, because I think traditionally, most kick-off meetings stop at agenda item number four. Now I'm telling you to add this agenda item number five, which is your WBS, breaking down those high-level things, and even going down into tasks if you can. If you choose to do that, recognize that you will need a much longer meeting than you expect. Not the traditional two to three hours, which probably some are saying, "I don't even do a two to three hour". I'm telling you, two minimum for a kickoff meeting. But if you're this element, which I highly recommend you do, you're at least going to need a half a day, because you can actually start kicking out the baseline project plan with this technique. I highly recommend you do it. It is a must, something that you should never skip, because your team is the one who's going to be creating it, not you. And when they create it, there's accountability, and that just makes your life easy from day one.
Agenda item number six, and the last one: next steps. Now, you're a project manager. It's really important at the end of your kickoff meeting that you lay out what are the next steps for everybody. You're already and should be in that mode of, "I'm your project manager, you're the project team member. We now all have tasks that we have to execute it," not just walking away saying, "Thank you so much for attending." It's like, no. "Thank you for attending, but I also have tasks for you to do." So this is where you want to lay it out very clearly. Some of those initial tasks can be, "I'm going to clean up, as a project manager, the WBS. I'm going to send it off to you." Their tasks can be, "You already know what some of the WBS task items are, so please take those with you and start executing on them." You also may want to have some other elements that you set up in the ways of working, like, "Hey, if you know your travel schedule or your vacation schedule, can you please put it in our project SharePoint site." It's all of that stuff that you want to ensure that when you walk out of this meeting, everyone has tasks and they know what to expect: the task, who's going to be doing it, and more importantly, when is it due? If you do this at your kickoff, you are setting the tone. The tone is so important for success.
So, yay. Congratulations. You now have all of the key agenda items you need to have a very successful project kickoff meeting. I'm so happy for you. This is going to make your life so much easier. Now, as I said to you earlier on, please go under this video. I put a link for you on why projects fail. If you're here for a project kickoff agenda, you definitely need this too. Go check it out and download it. If you learned something new in this video, please give it a like, as it tells YouTube we're doing a good job and it's going to even put our content out there more, growing this awesome community. If you have any other comments or questions, please put them below. We'd love to hear from you. Until the next video, see you.