Top Gun IT Project Managers Use Kickoff’s For All Major Phases Of A Project

I am always amazed at projects when there is only one project kickoff scheduled if any. For other critical project phases with a milestone and associated deliverables, simply none! It is a must-do to align all participants in the team involved in the phase. I always plan kickoffs on my projects for critical phases, below are the reasons why.

The Reasons Why You Should Use A Kickoff For Every Major Phase Of A Project

• Each phase of a project has new participants involved. A kickoff is a perfect opportunity for all players to meet face to face and get to know each other. Do not take for granted that all participants working on the same program or project know each other.
• Some of the resources assigned to the phase may have been on-boarded for the project recently or coming from another project or members of a vendor’s team and will be out of context. Providing a quick project synopsis, its business benefits, what business changes are being delivered, the current state of the project, and where the project currently is on the roadmap will help not only recently on-boarded resources but a refresher for others.
• It is an opportunity to reevaluate the team, priorities may have changed within the IT department, some of the resources originally assigned to support the phase may not be available as planned. The scope may have changed and new participants will need to be identified and added to the team.
• It will state and/or confirm expectations, objectives, goals, success criteria, for the audience to support a successful delivery.
• It will clearly communicate to the team the expected deliverables for completing and exiting the phase successfully.
• It is an opportunity to communicate current risks and assumptions, as well as to capture any new risks raised during the kickoff.
• It will reconfirm the methodology used for the project: Waterfall, Agile, SAP Activate, etc., and align all resources to support the methodology and associated best practices used during the phase.
• It is an opportunity to communicate: in-scope and out-of-scope items, schedules, roles, and responsibilities, as well as tools to be used during the phase.
• If you are using a RACI, it is the perfect opportunity to validate the RACI one last time before showtime.
• It is a way to inform all participants on communication protocols be used during the phase: requirements, format, and frequency (meetings, reports, etc.)
• Your kickoff presentation has to be tuned for the audience! If you are planning a UAT and the audience is a business team, IT jargon and acronyms will not be understood by the business team it will just confuse them and will get them started on the wrong foot. A good practice is to use an acronym followed by the full spelling the first time you use it in the presentation: SAP SUM (Software Update Manager)
• Be honest. Jetfighter pilots use afterburners to increase the thrust in specific maneuvers or critical situations, overtime on a project is similar. If you know already the activities will be aggressive and may require overtime, disclose it in the kickoff, don’t surprise participants with overtime at the last minute during the phase.
• During the Kickoff be confident but humble, be fun but serious, control the kickoff don’t let it go in tangent on topics out of scope for the kickoff.
• Be elegant, some of the participants may be difficult or cold, but always remember these words from Maya Angelou: “People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel.”
• Plan a debriefing session at the end of the phase with all participants to go over the lessons learned.
• Save 15 minutes at the end of the kickoff for Questions and Answers.
• Words of caution: “the jetfighter you are about to take for a mission has no ejection seats, you have only 2 options: land it or crash it!”

Have fun with your kickoff!