Project Kickoff Meeting

Did your team suggest an idea that is now a full-on project? That’s great! It’s always exciting to start a new project because it’s so full of possibilities. However, before getting started, make sure that you set up a project kickoff meeting to ensure a successful and smooth collaboration among everyone involved.

What is a Project Kickoff Meeting?

The purpose of the project kickoff meeting is to set everyone’s expectations and understand the necessary things to ensure a successful execution.

When to Have a Project Kickoff Meeting and What to Include

Projects come in different shapes and sizes. Sometimes you might need to do a pre-kickoff meeting before the actual kickoff meeting. Most times, you’ll have one kickoff meeting before starting to dive into the tasks and deadlines. For bigger projects, you might have multiple phases for a more extended period, so ideally, you’ll want to have a kickoff meeting for each stage. In general, every kickoff meeting should discuss:

• Stakeholders - Who will be involved in this project from start to finish and the main point of contact (POC)? In most cases, the project manager is also the POC.
• Scope - What are the deliverables for this project?
• Timeline - How many phases does this project include and when is each phase and deliverable is due?
• Potential Challenges - What are some potential challenges that we will encounter?
• Success - How can we know that this project is successfully completed?

What This Project Kickoff Meeting Template Includes

A new project can be exciting, but it can also be overwhelming, especially if it’s your first time handling a big project. The great thing is that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel to put together your project kickoff agenda.

We’ve designed a template that works with any team and project size, so you can focus on running the meeting.

Project summary

Always start with the why before diving deep into the tactics. Why are you doing this project? What problem is it solving, and what will be the ultimate benefit for your company and your customers? Make sure to link to any document or resources.

Purpose / goals

List all the goals or objectives. You can link any goals related to this project. Doing this makes it easy to visually see the progress of each goal and who’s working on them. Ideally, you want to narrow down the objectives. Having too many might affect the success and completion of your project.

Scope

Discuss the overall scope and the specific deliverables. More importantly, you should also discuss what’s NOT included.

Who’s involved?

Who will be the project manager, main point of contact, and contributors? Are there people who need to be informed but are not directly involved in the execution?

Timeline

Discuss the primary deadline and the deadline for each deliverable. Also, does the project require revisions? What is the time frame for everyone to give their feedback and finalize the project?

Summary

A project kickoff meeting can be straightforward and hassle-free for everyone involved. Using this template can help you ensure you cover everything in the meeting without having to spend too much time researching. Using a project kickoff meeting template makes your meetings better and shorter since you can have discussions before the meeting takes place. Basically, you can have an asynchronous pre-kickoff meeting so when you jump on your actual project kickoff call, you'll nail it.