I recently participated in a kick-off meeting for my project. Technically, it was a kick-off for only the technology group; absent were the business stakeholders. We reached agreements on the majority of the timeline, risks, and issues; we resolved the open items in the next few days. However, without the business stakeholders, we could not baseline the project plan, nor gain their insights on the risks and issues. As a result, we are still trying to get the project off the ground.

The kick off meeting is important: project team members get the chance to meet one another; project leaders can discuss the project timeline budget, and scope; the project team can brainstorm and discuss issues and risks; and there is a sense of unity that comes from having met together for one or more days on something important to us and our company. Having a kick off meeting without all the stakeholders is like fielding a football team with only eight players; we might survive for a few plays, but eventually our weaknesses will be exposed and we will fail.

What does it take to have a successful kick-off meeting?

1. Invite the right people

Projects often suffer from having too many or too few people. Many project leaders, in an effort to be politically correct, invite people that have little investment in the project outcome. These people are invited to the team even though they will not have a project role, or can not help the team achieve the project’s objectives. These folks end up as dead weight. Many times they become the snipers and assassins that bring up issues but few solutions. The project team ends up chasing these issues even though they have little impact on the success of the project, wasting time and resources.

How do we know that we have too many people (or the wrong people) on the project? Symptoms include issues raised that take time and effort to resolve but do not add to delivering the project on time or budget, increased scope, and meetings where people are bringing up questions unrelated to the project or that don’t contribute at all to the project.

A project with too few people will have different symptoms. These include: the project has issues or risks that are not getting resolved, project tasks are slipping, business processes are slowing down project progress (such as purchasing slowing down the order of required material), or the project is at risk of being cut or reduced. These symptoms point to not having the right stakeholders involved, the right sponsor or other executives, or just having enough workers to execute project tasks.

To identify the right people, a project manager can ask a few simple questions. If this project is successful, who will benefit from it? Who is necessary to achieving our project’s objectives and deliverables? Who has the political clout to fund the project, deliver success, or cause the project to fail? Who, or what departments, will be important to executing project tasks? In addition to these questions, the project manager should consider the role that vendors and consultants play. Vendors can be difficult to work with because they have different objectives; the project manager needs to find a way to align the vendor’s objectives with the project goals.

2. Have an agenda and stick to it

This is stating the obvious. I think most people know that a meeting runs more efficiently and has a higher likelihood of success if there is an agenda. What should be on the agenda?

The agenda is driven by the goals of the meeting. I believe the most important goal of the kick off meeting is to gain alignment. I want everyone on the project to be aligned around our projects goals, resources, scope, timelines, and process. I also want the project team to be aligned with issues and risks, even though we may not yet agree on issue resolution or risk mitigation.

3. Pre-wire important attendees in critical issues

The hottest items in a kick off meeting tend to be project timeline, issues, and risks. As the project manager meets with stakeholders to develop a schedule, she may also discover other critical issues, such as budget or resources. Bringing these issues in cold to a kick meeting can be a lot like sticking your hand in hot water; it hurts not because it burns, but because the water was so much hotter than my hand was.

Pre-wiring is a way to bring up these critical issues with project team members before the kick off meeting. That way the project manager can help key team members understand the issues, and to gather ideas on what the solutions might be. This process reduces the heat at which the issues will be debated in the kick off meeting because there will already be agreement by key players on the issue and some ideas on how to resolve it. Pre-wiring key team members on these critical issues can prevent the meeting from spiraling out of control and instead keep discussions focused and productive.

4. Raise issues and risks

Every project has risks and issues. Part of the kick off meeting is to raise these risks and issues, and to discuss how to mitigate and resolve them. There are a couple of methods to raising risks and issues in a kick off meeting. One way is to brainstorm. During the meeting, a facilitator can create a forum where team members identify issues and risks, no matter how small or trivial. Then team members can build on what others have said. After a period of brainstorming, the team can clarify, prioritize, and assign risks and issues to team members.

The second way is to meet with team members before the kick off meeting and ask them to identify risks and issues. This method doesn’t have the benefit of building on others ideas, but if the company has a culture where ideas are ignored or rejected, then this is a safe way to bring issues and risks to the meeting. The project manager can bring up the issues and risks to the project team, who can then discuss, prioritize, and assign them.

5. Create a forum for open dialogue

As alluded to above, some corporate cultures do not allow for free flowing discussion, especially when it involves sensitive or negative information. The project manager often has to find ways to enable the project team to overcome this cultural friction so that information flows efficiently and honestly.

A project manager can solicit the help of the project sponsor, project owner, or the functional leaders of the stakeholder departments to encourage open communication. The project manager can stress that this will increase the probability of project success.

The project manager can also foster group trust by having a “what happens here, stays here” rule. The group raises issues and risks, questions things, challenges things, etc., but individuals are protected from being isolated as “troublemakers”. The project manager can go one step further and extend that trust to individuals, so that if an individual has a private conversation with the project manager, the individual is protected from being identified as the one bringing up the issue.

These are just a few ideas to help make project kick off meetings more successful. By having an aligned project team constituted with the right people, your project will have much greater likelihood for success.