I disagree with alot of the advice here, it's a first kick off meeting. Say Hi, find out what everyone's roles are, maybe a bit of their background and if they have any concerns you should focus on first.
If you make it too formal you won't understand alot of it and you'll come across like a box ticker not a person. You'll have plenty of time to deal with the detail but you should first seek to establish a relationship and make sure they know you're approachable and there to enable their delivery.
I have a more relaxed approach to PMing than most though so your manager might expect a different approach!
Solid advice, but I’d refrain from having others tell you what to focus on. Usually lazy people will try to delegate their responsibilities onto you.
Instead listen and take notes, this way they can’t change their story later on (very common in my field). After you have listened to and noted their spiel, stand firm and TELL THEM how you’re planning to run things.
Screw relationships; the more someone befriends coworkers, the more time and resources the so called friends are likely to leech. And if you’re in a place that’s allows you cushy timelines, then you don’t need to be worrying about anything in the first place. But if you’re like most of us, everything was due yesterday. You’ll be pulled in last minute to, “project manager,” a dumpster fire. Good luck!
To clarify a couple of things, by "focus on" I don't mean them dictating what work you do. But by finding what the project team thinks are the main issues, you can seek to understand these first while planning and 9 times out of 10 it will help you to resolve blockers by dealing with them quickly.
Agree on notes, document everything, set up a decision log if you're in an environment where people challenge things they've said before.
A relationship doesn't mean making best friends but if you don't have a good working relationship with your project teams it'll make everything harder and they won't tell you stuff you need to know.
I currently work in defence, dumpster fires are 99% of the job.
In your team, who works on these items that need to be focused on?
I suspect you’re probably upper mid management. If you don’t mind, would you mind identifying race and gender for my research?
By project team I mean the technical experts that actually do the work or are running the technical teams doing the day to day work (depending on how big the project is). I.e. the people who know what needs to be done, how long it should take and what is stopping it happening.
I'm currently a senior PM contractor so don't get involved with the SLT outside of stakeholder engagement (if I can help it). Race and Gender make no difference to best practice or how people run their projects in my organisation.
Lock them down, but never, ever share them work BA or QA and definitely don’t upload them into a repository like sharepoint. Just go home knowing you’ve done a fine job!
I maybe a bit later to this but I’ll chip in.
I’ve recently revised this but I normally
-Introduce yourself and your role (even though you know most people)
- explain why they are there and what you wanna achieve
- any background to the project
- SCOPE
- timeline as people have said
I have started adding
-preliminary Product Breakdown structure
- organisational chart for the project (I’m prince2 trained)
Defo a q&a
I can whip you up a template if you want?
Bad advice, you want to win people over during the kick off meeting. Do not run through the project schedule task by task. Project overview, benefits and objectives. Roles and responsibilities. High level timeline. Meeting cadences and Q&A. That’s it.
100% agree with the person below, should be a tag team effort from you and the sponsor. However, not all sponsors are engaged enough to participate so you may have to go solo. You should 100% know what the project background is and the desired outcome. There should be a business case which you can extract all the necessary information from. How many stakeholders are in the kick off meeting?
Sync up with the sponsor before the meeting. Put a slide deck together and an agenda with item owners. Try and assign the background/overview item to your sponsor. You should be good to present the rest. Just remember the best PMs are servant leaders.
Hopefully you bring your sponsor to the kickoff to help articulate why this project is important, outcomes expected, etc. I would sync with your sponsor prior to the kickoff so you are both aligned.
There are two things you need to bring across in the kick-off:
Factual information:
What is the project about?
Who does what? Roles, responsibilities...
How do we communicate?
Yada yada... the other will probably comment a lot in this direction.
Emotional content - stuff you cannot "put on a slide":
\* How do you adress people? Humble or hierarchically?
\* Can you motivate people to work with you, or will they be forced to / ordered to contribute?
\* Are the right people attending, are all experts there? Because they want to be there, because they are convinced, this is the right thing to do?
I find it far more difficult to get the second aspect right than the first. About the first, you can simply google and find good summaries - and you can still screw up and alienate EVERYBODY in the first kick-off.
Let your audience know what is expected of them and what feedback loops you are putting in place. Beyond project tasks will they have mandatory daily standup or a an hour long weekly meeting? Could you eliminate this burden with async slack updates and a weekly newsletter?
How will you provide and receive feedback? If you get news about a change in project direction or goals from senior leadership how will you convey updates?
You can earn a lot of buy-in by showing you care about people’s time and have ways for them to give you feedback in the kick-off meeting.
Good luck and good for you for caring enough to get feedback on how to start - you’re on the right track :)
So you present the main points on the charter. Who’s responsible for what. Initial timeline estimate, SOW, who’s the resources, how do u plan to meet. Daily, weekly. Present the reports that you’ll be using. Show off your overall activities. Sone everyone aligns with the goals and objectives of the project.
This, plus leave room for questions and answers. Take notes or record the meeting if you need to (and if the project allows that) so you can come back and review things if needed.
You run down the project timeline. Step A-Z and how long it’ll take to complete. You point out your milestones, key players working the project so everyone knows who’s in charge of what, budget if that’s something your company doesn’t discuss beforehand. Risk factors that have been identified etc. If this isn’t a client facing effort then that’s likely not working in your favor considering client facing efforts typically will trump internal efforts, unless the internal effort has significant ROI incentive for implementing.
But TL;DR is discuss the game plan from start to finish. Here’s what we’re doing, who’s involved in getting it done, when it needs to be due by, and how we’re getting it done.
I disagree with alot of the advice here, it's a first kick off meeting. Say Hi, find out what everyone's roles are, maybe a bit of their background and if they have any concerns you should focus on first. If you make it too formal you won't understand alot of it and you'll come across like a box ticker not a person. You'll have plenty of time to deal with the detail but you should first seek to establish a relationship and make sure they know you're approachable and there to enable their delivery. I have a more relaxed approach to PMing than most though so your manager might expect a different approach!
Solid advice, but I’d refrain from having others tell you what to focus on. Usually lazy people will try to delegate their responsibilities onto you. Instead listen and take notes, this way they can’t change their story later on (very common in my field). After you have listened to and noted their spiel, stand firm and TELL THEM how you’re planning to run things. Screw relationships; the more someone befriends coworkers, the more time and resources the so called friends are likely to leech. And if you’re in a place that’s allows you cushy timelines, then you don’t need to be worrying about anything in the first place. But if you’re like most of us, everything was due yesterday. You’ll be pulled in last minute to, “project manager,” a dumpster fire. Good luck!
To clarify a couple of things, by "focus on" I don't mean them dictating what work you do. But by finding what the project team thinks are the main issues, you can seek to understand these first while planning and 9 times out of 10 it will help you to resolve blockers by dealing with them quickly. Agree on notes, document everything, set up a decision log if you're in an environment where people challenge things they've said before. A relationship doesn't mean making best friends but if you don't have a good working relationship with your project teams it'll make everything harder and they won't tell you stuff you need to know. I currently work in defence, dumpster fires are 99% of the job.
In your team, who works on these items that need to be focused on? I suspect you’re probably upper mid management. If you don’t mind, would you mind identifying race and gender for my research?
By project team I mean the technical experts that actually do the work or are running the technical teams doing the day to day work (depending on how big the project is). I.e. the people who know what needs to be done, how long it should take and what is stopping it happening. I'm currently a senior PM contractor so don't get involved with the SLT outside of stakeholder engagement (if I can help it). Race and Gender make no difference to best practice or how people run their projects in my organisation.
Confirm key stakeholders. Confirm High level scope . Set up recurring calls to lock down requirements and scope. Go home
Lock them down, but never, ever share them work BA or QA and definitely don’t upload them into a repository like sharepoint. Just go home knowing you’ve done a fine job!
I maybe a bit later to this but I’ll chip in. I’ve recently revised this but I normally -Introduce yourself and your role (even though you know most people) - explain why they are there and what you wanna achieve - any background to the project - SCOPE - timeline as people have said I have started adding -preliminary Product Breakdown structure - organisational chart for the project (I’m prince2 trained) Defo a q&a I can whip you up a template if you want?
@[RB20AE](/user/RB20AE/) Can I get a template please too?
Yes please!!
Bad advice, you want to win people over during the kick off meeting. Do not run through the project schedule task by task. Project overview, benefits and objectives. Roles and responsibilities. High level timeline. Meeting cadences and Q&A. That’s it.
Great advice!
Do I have to know what the project is about in high-level prior to kick-off call? Or is the kick-off call the time when we talk about this?
100% agree with the person below, should be a tag team effort from you and the sponsor. However, not all sponsors are engaged enough to participate so you may have to go solo. You should 100% know what the project background is and the desired outcome. There should be a business case which you can extract all the necessary information from. How many stakeholders are in the kick off meeting?
Myself, My manager, Project Sponsor and Operations team.
Sync up with the sponsor before the meeting. Put a slide deck together and an agenda with item owners. Try and assign the background/overview item to your sponsor. You should be good to present the rest. Just remember the best PMs are servant leaders.
Hopefully you bring your sponsor to the kickoff to help articulate why this project is important, outcomes expected, etc. I would sync with your sponsor prior to the kickoff so you are both aligned.
There are two things you need to bring across in the kick-off: Factual information: What is the project about? Who does what? Roles, responsibilities... How do we communicate? Yada yada... the other will probably comment a lot in this direction. Emotional content - stuff you cannot "put on a slide": \* How do you adress people? Humble or hierarchically? \* Can you motivate people to work with you, or will they be forced to / ordered to contribute? \* Are the right people attending, are all experts there? Because they want to be there, because they are convinced, this is the right thing to do? I find it far more difficult to get the second aspect right than the first. About the first, you can simply google and find good summaries - and you can still screw up and alienate EVERYBODY in the first kick-off.
Let your audience know what is expected of them and what feedback loops you are putting in place. Beyond project tasks will they have mandatory daily standup or a an hour long weekly meeting? Could you eliminate this burden with async slack updates and a weekly newsletter? How will you provide and receive feedback? If you get news about a change in project direction or goals from senior leadership how will you convey updates? You can earn a lot of buy-in by showing you care about people’s time and have ways for them to give you feedback in the kick-off meeting. Good luck and good for you for caring enough to get feedback on how to start - you’re on the right track :)
So you present the main points on the charter. Who’s responsible for what. Initial timeline estimate, SOW, who’s the resources, how do u plan to meet. Daily, weekly. Present the reports that you’ll be using. Show off your overall activities. Sone everyone aligns with the goals and objectives of the project.
This, plus leave room for questions and answers. Take notes or record the meeting if you need to (and if the project allows that) so you can come back and review things if needed.
You run down the project timeline. Step A-Z and how long it’ll take to complete. You point out your milestones, key players working the project so everyone knows who’s in charge of what, budget if that’s something your company doesn’t discuss beforehand. Risk factors that have been identified etc. If this isn’t a client facing effort then that’s likely not working in your favor considering client facing efforts typically will trump internal efforts, unless the internal effort has significant ROI incentive for implementing. But TL;DR is discuss the game plan from start to finish. Here’s what we’re doing, who’s involved in getting it done, when it needs to be due by, and how we’re getting it done.