When is the best time to do the Project Kick-off Meeting?

In this podcast, Ricardo talks about the time that the project kick-off meeting should be performed. He explains that as the size of the project, the kick-off meeting does not necessarily have to be just one but many. Ricardo shows that we can have a kick-off meeting early in the project where the WBS is still wider, and we can have another kick-off meeting once the plan is ready.

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Episode transcript

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Speaker 1 (4s): Hello everybody welcome to the five minutes PM pocket. Today like to discuss with you and try to answer one question. When is the best time to do the project kickoff meeting? A lot of people do a lot of mistakes and confusion trying to understand this concept. They think, Oh, should I do the kickoff meeting of the Project when I assigned the project manager in and I have the court team, or should I wait up to the execution den to the side, what to do?

What do I like to discuss with you? There is no perfect and right answer from a project perspective, I would like to offer you one suggestion. I think about multiple kickoff meetings. Let me try to explain this. When we assign the project manager, when we have the core team this time, it's the time to do the first kickoff meeting. This is more ideological.

This is more to explain what is inside the project charter. What does the expectation of the sponsor, why they decided to build this team, why they chose you and not someone else to do that project? So this is the Tam, but at this time, there is no meaning to do something like scaffolding, because there is no scalpel yet there is no risk plan yet. So this kickoff it's much more to raise awareness.

Beaut commitment among is a small team that we call the core team later when we have the plan ready, and we are starting this acute one of the project or the phase daily stuff to do a, not a kickoff meeting, you don't need to call. There is a kickoff meeting, but as an acute and kick-off meeting or something like that. But during this time, you will have a much bigger group and does is to raise their awareness of all or other stakeholders that were not involved, in this initial phase.

If your project phases or you can do a kickoff meeting for each phase, she'll look, how does this be interesting. So we can not be short, tight, that to methodology and saying, Oh, I need, do you do this no tomorrow? We love to share with people my expectation, but I can't do that because of the methodology nor methodology, there is no description of doing a kickoff meeting. Understand. So forget this.

Remember the basic concept behind the kickoff meeting is to increase awareness, commitment, and understanding about the Project, in the beginning, you have too many thanks to telling we are in a ward off ideas, but when we, or close to the execution, Dan, we have to, we have a lot of deadlines, timeframe teams. So this is the time to commit these people to the Project.

So imagine that I have a nuclear power plant, a 10-year project. I do think it's relevant to do a kickoff meeting at the beginning of the process and say, Oh, everybody is committed to something that we are proposing. And then we don't need to do anything else in the next 10 years. So this is not relevant. Remember Ray's committee improving communications is an ongoing process. Each is not a one-time delivery process' so kick-off, we can make a kickoff at the beginning, Alcoa kick-off from the major progress of the project.

It's like thinking about the program concept and not telling you that you are changed from project to program, but when you know, such a big project, you can do something like that. You can, okay, I'm building a Butte building. So I will do a kickoff or the foundations. I will do the kickoff or the sailing. I will do the kickoff or the lateral hydraulic technology, it web internet, and all the stuff that to be inside the building.

So look, I don't need to do this only once, but the other way, if your project is a very small something like a two-month project, very small team, it's also pointless to do three kickoff meetings, one for each phase, because your projects should is more, that is better to do only once because of the people when the team we'll be communicating into a be together all the time. So this is what really matters.

Remember the focus of the kickoff meeting. He has raised awareness, built up the commitment, and improved communications and understanding about the product. This is what really matters. This is what really meant much more than any kind of, and that we are using So. We use the kickoff meeting concept to improve this, to be tightened to one specific model, the methodology or process. I hope you enjoy this podcast and see you next week with another five minutes PM.

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