If you’re in the project management field, you know how crucial proper planning is to your success. A project kickoff meeting is a great way to get things started — but just like any part of the process, you can’t go into your kickoff without a plan.

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Article Roadmap

• The Best Project Kickoff Checklist
  • Before Your Kickoff
  • During Your Meeting
  • When You’re Ready to Start the Project
• Next Steps

We’re giving you the ultimate project kickoff checklist, a comprehensive list of all the boxes you need to check to start your project off right. Whether you’re a seasoned project manager or just starting out, using our checklist for your project kickoff meeting will help ensure you and your team are ready to get down to business. Let’s dive in!

The Best Project Kickoff Checklist

If you’re gearing up for your next kickoff, you’ve come to the right place. Our comprehensive project kickoff checklist covers all your bases.

Some project kickoff checklists only deal with “pre-work,” or the steps you take to prepare for your kickoff meeting. Others outline sample agendas for the kickoff, while others get into project specifics or what needs to be done before a project begins. Any of these are good — it really depends on what you need the most.

Since we at SelectHub like to take a comprehensive approach, we’ve broken down our list into three phases: what to do before your kickoff meeting, during your meeting and when you’re ready to start work.

Check out our list below. Feel free to use ours as a guideline for writing your own, or tweak any of the elements we include to fit your specific project requirements. Remember, the more specific it is to your project, the better prepared you’ll be when the rubber meets the road.

Before Your Kickoff

As essential as project planning is, a little pre-planning never hurts. Go into your kickoff meeting with a very clear idea of what you want to communicate and accomplish. This keeps things organized and on track, and ensures that everyone involved is on the same page heading into the project.

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While it’s not necessary to have total clarity on every single item before your meeting, if something is left unanswered, make a point to address it during one of these phases.

1. Identify and secure all personnel. If there are any gaps in your team, make sure there’s a plan in place to fill those outstanding roles.

2. Identify and confirm all clients or stakeholders. Go into your kickoff meeting with a list of your key stakeholders, and, ideally, some or all of those stakeholders in attendance.

3. Complete the project charter. This document is your elevator pitch, outlining your project objectives, scope and responsibilities. You’ll want to not only write one up but also get it approved by your stakeholders.

4. Communicate the project purpose. While the kickoff meeting gives you an opportunity to discuss the project with all parties involved, you don’t want them coming in blind. It’s usually best to send a document or explainer in advance to team members, making the purpose and context of the project clear.

5. Complete your RACI chart. Also known as a responsibility assignment matrix, this chart identifies and assigns the roles and responsibilities involved in your project to each team member.

6. Invite the project sponsor. It’s ideal to have your sponsor attend and even speak at the kickoff meeting. After all, they’re the one funding the operation, so their investment means a lot to both you and them.

7. Draft the project communications plan. This outlines the rules of engagement when it comes to project communications, and provides pre-approval for contact between key stakeholders, managers and team members, leaving those crucial lines of communication open.

8. Set your kickoff meeting agenda and distribute it to all attendees. Again, bring everyone in with clear expectations of what you’re going to go over so there’s no confusion. This also gives team members the opportunity to think about concerns or questions they might have prior to the project’s official start.

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Running a Project Kickoff Meeting

Now you’re ready for the project kickoff meeting. Having all the major players in one room is an extremely valuable opportunity. Done correctly, the kickoff meeting gets everyone on the same page, establishes common baselines and goals, and prepares your team to get to work.

Here’s how to run your meeting.

1. Appoint someone to record minutes. The information shared in this meeting and related discussions are pretty crucial to your project, so make sure they’re being recorded. Having these records to refer back to later may prove invaluable down the line, especially if you run into unforeseen changes or conflicts.

2. Set ground rules for the meeting. This establishes how you want people to interact and communicate. For example, are questions allowed at any time during the meeting, or will you set a specific time for questions towards the end? It may seem basic, but structuring your meeting with ground rules keeps things organized and effective. You don’t want to have people talking over each other.

3. Keep the meeting on track. Meetings create interesting environments. When you get a lot of people in a room, especially creative and innovative minds, you might find the conversation moving to unexpected places. While these tangents are sometimes valuable, you don’t want your meeting to veer off-course.

Using a parking lot for valuable ideas that come up but aren’t quite on-topic can preserve those threads to explore at a later time without tanking your meeting.

4. Go over key action items. These are the tasks the project is broken down into — all the moving parts and stages and steps that get doled out to your team members, that all add up to a successful, complete project.

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Project Kickoff Meeting Agenda

As an added bonus, here’s a sample meeting agenda you can follow to make sure all your bases are covered.

1. Start with a project brief. Why did you get these people together in the first place? Start off your meeting by telling them why they’re here. Your brief should cover:

• Definition: What the project is, and what value it provides
• Goals: What you’re trying to achieve in the short-term and long-term
• SWOT: Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats related to the project
• Timeline: When the project starts and finishes, and any important milestones in between

2. Outline roles and responsibilities. Make sure everyone knows what they’re responsible for, when it’s due and what resources they have to do it. The RACI chart comes into play here. Also, use this time to establish measures for success and quality work, and answer any questions or concerns your team might have.

3. Set ongoing expectations. Establish guidelines for how often you’ll meet, how you’ll communicate, what you expect from the team, and how you’ll track and evaluate progress.

If you’re using specific tools, like project management software, for the project, here’s an opportunity to go over which platforms, how they work and how you expect your team to use them.

4. Give your team the next steps. Everyone should leave the meeting feeling informed and confident that they know what’s coming next. This might mean giving them their first assignments.

5. Leave time for Q&A. You want every person involved in the project to feel secure in their relationship and responsibility to it. Make sure all questions are addressed before the meeting ends.

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When You’re Ready to Start the Project

Now the kickoff meeting is behind you, and you’re raring to start. Great! Just make sure all the boxes are ticked on our final checklist, and you’ll be good to go.

To make things easier, we phrased these things as questions. So, before you set your team loose on their tasks, did you…

1. Communicate the goals of the project to all team members, and make sure everyone understands the objectives?

2. Make sure that everyone understands their responsibilities to the project?

3. Get the commitment you need for the project from team members, stakeholders, sponsors and other key parties?

4. Establish leadership for the project?

5. Motivated the project team to follow you and make things happen?

6. Identify and communicate critical milestones, phases and deadlines?

7. Review the overall project work plan and schedule tasks and dependencies appropriately?

8. Explain the standard operating procedures during the project, like meetings, documentation and reports, and ongoing communication

9. Given your team the go-ahead to move on their initial tasks?

10. Established all the necessary conditions to start and sustain work?

Reflect on your project plan and kickoff meeting — if you can answer a confident “yes” to all 10 of these questions, you’re all set. If you can’t, that means there’s something left to address.

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Next Steps

Starting a project might be the hardest part of the process. But it’s also the first step towards great success. With our checklists in hand, you can rest assured that your journey will start off on the right foot.

Remember, project management isn’t one-size-fits-all, and adapting to the specific needs of each project is crucial. If you need more help managing your projects, you might want to consider adopting project management software for your business. Check out our free comparison report to see how industry-leading products in PM stack up.

So, did we leave any key steps off our checklists? Let us know in the comments!