Kickoff

Introduction

The kick-off play is a ceremony centred around the co-creation of a document that summarises the practicalities of the project for stakeholders, the delivery team, and anybody who may join the project down the track.

Think of it as a high-level contract between the business and team members on the goals and expectations for the project that works to reveal any hidden assumptions which may cause issues down the road.

The kickoff document distils the key elements of any related pre-existing definition or strategy documents into an easy-to-read format. It also includes high-level operational and logistical information such as timelines, roles and responsibilities, and founding assumptions.

Where other related artefacts may have covered blue sky and future iterations of the project, the kick-off document specifically defines what should be worked on and delivered in the current phase.

Participants

The kick-off document is usually co-authored by the project lead and high-level stakeholders from the business. We’ve found that including representation from both the delivery team, and the beneficiaries of their work is key to achieving alignment and unearthing assumptions.

If your delivery team is small enough (i.e less than 8 people) it can be a good idea to include them all. For larger teams we’ve found it more productive to include a smaller, representative subset who can speak to all the disciplines and vested interests.

Running a kickoff ceremony

The complexity, level of innovation and amount of clarity that stakeholders have about the project often determines whether other plays should be completed before a kickoff ceremony kick-off document.

When there are a lot of unknowns about the scope of the project, you’ll probably want to undertake some product/project defining exercises before jumping in to a kickoff.

In situations where the scope is clear, the kick-off document can be written without a great deal of preparation.

Preparation

Book a meeting with the high-level stakeholders and any other project leads. It’s good to have representation from the business, design and technical domains.

Start a new kick-off document in a tool or platform that is easily accessible by team members. We usually reach for a cloud-based workspace such as Notion, Confluence, or Teams.

Use the following page sections as the basis of the document:

• Context & background
• Goal(s)
• Project constraints & risks
• Assumptions
• High-level timeline
• Notes/Questions
• Team & responsibility

Method

1. Start the meeting with an overview of why the kick-off document is useful (if it’s your first time use the intro to this play).
2. Share your screen, focusing on the document template you have prepared.
3. Make your way through each topic, referring to previous documents if similar information has been collected before.
   1. Context & background should include all the critical information someone needs to know when joining the project
      1. try to steer clear of getting bogged down in minutiae, and relegate specificity to other places in your project knowledge base
   2. Goal(s) should define the primary and secondary **business goals for the project
   3. Project constraints & risks should include the restrictions of the project, or the aspects that could jeopardise its success
      1. E.g. is it time-boxed? are there budgetary constraints? are stakeholders available to meaningfully engage in the delivery process?
   4. Assumptions should give an overview of the beliefs or expectations that stakeholders and the delivery team have about the project
      1. It can take time for these to surface and, once a few assumptions are jotted down, more often emerge
      2. Time spent here is valuable as it may uncover some key misalignments which can be nipped in the bud before they get expensive
   5. High-level timeline should note the key milestones and when they are expected to be completed by
      1. If none exist, try asking ask people what timing assumptions they’re currently holding
      2. If you have a final deadline, but nothing else, take a shot at back-filling intermediate milestones to guarantee a good final outcome
   6. Notes/Questions should include any relevant notes or questions raised during the process of writing the document
   7. Team & responsibility should define the people expected to be involved in the project and their responsibilities
      • When the project is large enough, we like to define teams into primary and support groups. Primary teams actively participate in the project and are responsible for reaching goals and timelines. Support teams are brought in as needed to assist in reaching goals and timelines.
      • Be sure to capture the responsibilities of the project‘s high-level stakeholders and advisors and any relevant facts related to their availability throughout delivery
4. After the meeting, tidy up the document and share with stakeholders and relevant delivery team for review and comment.
5. Link any new team members to the kick-off document as they join.

Success looks like…

Another delivery team member or stakeholder who was not involved in the making of the kickoff can read it through end to end, and have no fundamental issues with the premises and assumptions it contains.

Look at an example kickoff document

To get a sense of what our kickoff documents look like for a small project, take a look at the kickoff document for version 5 of the website you’re reading right now.