In setting up the first meeting it is vital to establish and affirm quality and delivery guidelines; milestones; timelines for tasks within the project and assign roles to each involved.
The kick-off meeting should have the ingredients of our meeting planning skills discussion earlier in the book. It should also address all of the following questions and issues:
- Who should attend and what are their roles?
- What are the objectives and goals from the project?
- How will they be measured?
- What are the milestones and deliverables from each stage?
- Where are the risks and how are they going to be mitigated?
- How will the project be managed?
- Discussions and actions for the next stages
Dependent on the size of the project, it may be important to release much of the background information in advance of the meeting. This will allow enough time for team members to review it before the kick-off session. The last thing you need is a continuous line of questioning for areas that are answered in the plan. This way you can concentrate on the actions and issues when the project team is assembled.
Another factor with this meeting is the issue of cost of team members being present. Larger projects could have upwards of 10-30 individuals in attendance. Making good use of their time will gain kudos, wasting it creates the reverse effect.
In getting rolling it is also very important to emphasize quality criteria and delivery guidelines. This helps to set the bar for what is important for the project. Having to redo elements of a project because some of the tasks were not completed to a satisfactory level is very commonplace. And even if penalties or fixed cost elements provide some protection here, missing a critical deadline, may throw the whole thing off.
For example if you do not get the foundation in place, and the framing of a house completed in time for the permafrost to begin, in northern climes it might delay building till the spring. Many issues could then be affected as a result, increased labor costs in the following spring, unavailable labor and a schedule now behind.
Excerpted from Finish What You Start by Michael Cunningham
