Purpose of Project Kick-off Meeting
Project kickoff meetings are more than just a feel good, meet and greet. It is the project manager’s first opportunity to set expectations across the entire project team, crack the ice that can inhibit team communication and ensure that your sponsor and stakeholders understand the project goals, deliverables and schedule milestones thereby helping the project team be successful.
Instructions
This Project Kickoff Presentation can be used for a variety of project types. It is intended to be used at a project kickoff meeting with relevant stakeholders, project sponsors, and project team members present. The meeting is typically led by the project manager. The tone of the meeting should be motivating to encourage interest and commitment to the project. Depending on the size of the project, the meeting can be between one and two hours, including time for questions. The kickoff meeting provides high level information about the project and does not get into granular details of the project implementation.
Tips
•Invitees should include people assigned to the project and/or functional managers who will have staff involved in the project, the project sponsor, and any other important stakeholders. (Note: some attendees may be external to the university such as vendor.)
•Most of this information presented at the kick off meeting will come from the Project Charter. It is common to involve key project members in the creation of the project kickoff presentation content to ensure accuracy and that a wide variety of perspectives have been accounted for. It is also wise to discuss some of the information with key project sponsors and stakeholders prior to the kickoff meeting to avoid any major disapproval in the meeting.
•Time should be allotted throughout the presentation or at the end for questions and discussion.
•The kickoff is intended to bring everyone up to speed, not to discuss every item in detail.
•Every participant needs to see you taking charge of the meeting agenda.
•Summarize the meeting with a call for action and list outstanding items that require immediate follow-up. Provide direction on any follow-up communication needed and what you expect from everyone at the first project status meeting.
This project kickoff presentation can also be used later in the project if new team members are brought on board. The presentation can be shared with them to help them get up to speed quickly on the details of the project.
Next Steps
File the presentation in the document repository being used by the team. Once the project has been kicked off, the project will move into the Planning phase.