Project Kick-off Meeting

Project kick-off meeting is the one of the first and most important meetings that happens in a project or even at the beginning of a phase of a project. Kick-off meetings generally are held once the project planning is completed by the project team. Planning happens after a go-ahead for a new project has been given. A go-ahead for a new project comes in the form of a project charter document. Learn more about the process in our project management professional certification course. The project charter document is prepared either with an approved business case document or after an agreement has been signed with an external project to start a new project. 

The project charter, which serves as the authorization to start the project contains the scope, time and cost constraints within which the project has to be managed. The project manager with the core team will develop a detailed project plan outlining how the project will be carried out within these constraints. The plan also outlines the roles and responsibilities of different stakeholders and groups who are outside the project team.

Kick-off meeting is planned as the first major meeting, where the project manager invites all important stakeholders including the sponsor, internal & external customers, different functional groups who will be involved in the execution of the project. Kick-off meeting is carried out to bring all stakeholders to a common understanding about the project.

Some of the points which are addressed in a typical kick-off meeting includes but not limited to following:

• Project Background and Business Need
• Project Objectives
• Customer background and their expectation
• Introducing the project team to all stakeholders and vice versa
• Project Plan presentation
• Expectations from different stakeholders
• Roles and responsibility of different stakeholders (beyond the project team)
• Collaboration and communication model
• Requesting for support from different stakeholder groups for project success.

A project kick-off meeting generally is done after planning is done, so that the detailed plan can be presented to all stakeholders and is used as an opportunity to seek support and buy-in from all stakeholders. It may be done once in a project before the execution phase is about to begin. Or kick-off may be done for each phase of the project as well.

Kick-off meeting being the most important meeting for starting the project; it must be planned very well.