Project Kickoff

Before running this Play, identify your project sponsor, project leader, facilitator, core team, and stakeholders. (One team member might hold multiple roles.)

• Project sponsor (or executive sponsor): The most senior stakeholder who has the most to gain or lose from your project’s delivery

• Project leader: Sets the vision on what the team is delivering and why

• Facilitator: Responsible for keeping the kickoff meeting flowing and focused

• Core team: The people who do the project work

• Stakeholders: Anyone with insights, information, feedback, or a vested interest in the project’s outcome

Bring together the project sponsor, leader, and facilitator to draft a project vision, mission, and mission tests in a collaborative document, such as a Confluence page, whiteboard, or Trello board. The rest of the project team will participate in a 5-minute silent pre-read of the project poster.

Next, the team will revise these elements during the kickoff meeting:

• Vision: Your “why,” or the impact your team will make when the project is completed. Why are you pursuing this project?

• Mission: Your “what” and “how.” What are you trying to do? How will you achieve your vision?

• Mission tests: Your “when.” What will it look like when this project is successful? These tests indicate if your mission is on track and create a shared definition of “done.”

Ask your project sponsor to open the session by welcoming attendees and sharing a quick overview of the project and its relationship to the organization. If your sponsor isn’t available to join the session, you can ask them to record a quick video, like a Loom, ahead of time to share with the group.

At the beginning of the project kickoff meeting, share an overview of the agenda, along with some mutual agreements to keep the conversation productive:

• Collaboration: Let’s work together to setup this project for success.

• Good enough: Let’s aim for progress, not perfection. Gather enough information to create a shared understanding, then continue refining it in the future.

• Possibility: Let’s suspend judgment about what has been, and keep an open mind about what could be.

Start with a short icebreaker to get everyone focused and in the right mindset.

If the group doesn’t already know each other, have each person introduce themselves, explain their role in the project, and answer one icebreaker question. (See the Icebreakers Play for inspiration.)

If the group is already familiar, skip straight to the icebreaker.

This is the most important aspect of the project kickoff: rallying the team around a shared purpose that can inspire and guide them.

Begin by sharing the initial vision, mission, and mission tests created before the kickoff. Then, break attendees into three groups: one for vision, one for mission, and one for mission tests.

Give each group 20 minutes to refine the initial statements. Next, bring the group back together to present and discuss their revised statements.

Make any agreed-upon changes, then vote to formally accept them for the project. You can (and should) refine these elements later in the project as you uncover new information.

Invite your project leader to close the meeting by thanking the group for their collaboration, providing any feedback or closing thoughts, and recapping the next steps. On your list of action items, assign a team member to update the project poster with your agreed-upon vision, mission, and mission tests.

Round out the plans

If there’s time during your kickoff meeting, or in a separate session, you can use other Plays to continue outlining the project plans.

• Set Objectives and Key Results.

• Make a DACI Decision-making Framework to determine who will drive the project and who will be accountable, consulted, and informed.

• Map out your project’s proposed timeline, tasks, and milestones so you can Prioritize, as a Team.

Define next steps

Create a workback plan or a backlog of tasks using a tool like Trello, a Jira project management template, or a Confluence project plan template.

Update the plans

As the project moves along, revisit these plans and your project post to document progress and make any needed adjustments.