Kickoff
Introduction
A kickoff meeting is the first meeting with the project team and the client.
Kickoff is usually conducted after all the pre-requisites are met and implementation is ready to be started.
Preferably the DM should come onsite to the customer location for the kickoff.
As the kickoff is often the first time when all the participants of the project get together (while results demo might be the last time), the main aim of the kickoff is to bring all the teams and stakeholders on the same page regarding what they are doing and with what aim, as well as to establish their roles on the project. Typically the meeting covers the following subjects:
Project overview
This section aims to establish or verify common ground for those aware of the project and give background to the attendees who are new to the project. Slides for it would contain extracts from SOW on project Description, Deliverables, Success Criteria, a map of the process flow to be automated is included to illustrate the scope of work.
Teams introduction
Here all the teams who work on the projects should be introduced, including:
- Full names
- Roles on the project
- Escalation levels
- Contact emails (phones where applicable)
To better illustrate the escalation levels and roles, it's a good idea to put the names in a tree structure showing who reports to whom in each department/squad.
Project governance
- Responsibility matrix shall be provided to clearly articulate areas of responsibilities for each team member.
- Project plan: DM articulates in what format the progress will be tracked (see Project Tracking), with key milestones communicated to the stakeholders.
- Communication schedule: The implementation team should meet regularly, preferably on a daily basis. Other key stakeholders can meet on weekly, bi-weekly or monthly basis.
Immediate priorities and next steps
The end of the kickoff is a good opportunity to list out all the open issues, urgent activities and blockers that impact the project. An owner shall be defined for each item. Point out the dependencies - what activities cannot start until these actions are performed (for example, until the customer provides the documents samples, team cannot start review of dataset and manual task implementation). Also here one could raise business questions (for example, regarding logic in the flow or documents for ML), organizational questions (VPN, access to systems, team logistics) or let the customer team bring up what they want to know or add to the action plan - again, if the time allows and the audience is willing to proceed to additional topics. Depending on the audience and overall status, these topics can be changed/dropped or more topics can be introduced, such as:
- WorkFusion overview: Typically done by presales/sales when there's someone new in the audience who has not participated in the sales cycles.
- Concerns: It might be wise to bring up something that is out of general kickoff flow but you know is of interest to the customer, for example, related to infrastructure, legal.
Also, view the sample kickoff deck.
Typical implementation phases
