Kickoff meetings in waterfall and agile methodologies

You have been assigned a new project after contract signed off.  What steps would you take to develop the initial project plan and prepare for the kick-off meeting?

I am assuming that high level requirements, business case, assumptions and constrains are already finalized during contract negotiation.

Project planning and kickoff meeting agenda is bit different for waterfall and agile frameworks, since framework is not provided in question, I will try answer for both.

Waterfall methodology

As Project Manager I will study contract document with other supporting documents like terms and conditions, high level requirements, assumptions and constrains.

This will give me clear idea about customer’s high level requirements and constrains, especially budget or time constrains (if any)

I will then develop complete project management plan with consultation of project team and will also develop all subsidiary project plans like Scope, schedule, cost, quality, HR, risk, communication, stakeholder plans along with project performance baselines (Scope baseline, Schedule baseline and Cost baselines) and will also setup configuration management plan and change control board.

I will submit complete project management plan to key stakeholders and receives the approval.

On receiving approval of PM plans and go ahead signal will schedule kickoff meeting with all stakeholders, during this meeting will discuss the project management plan, configuration management plan, change management plans to make sure all are on same page including customer.

In waterfall methodology kickoff meeting is a last step of planning phase, before starting project activities.

Agile Methodology

For Agile framework this answer would be bit different, so I will discuss my activities for initial project plan and kickoff meetings in bit of detail.

I will study contract documentations with all supporting documents to understand and take note of high level requirements of project, terms and conditions, project constrains and assumptions.

In Agile, kickoff meeting is a start of planning phase, since agile focus more on doing the work instead of documentations (working software over comprehensive documentations), kickoff meeting is considered start of planning and execution phase simultaneously.

So I will setup initial project plan and ground rules for the team, team will also decompose entire project into Epic, User Story or tasks and setup product backlog, since agile is meant “Value Driven Delivery”, customer will be involved in iteration planning and execution, since this topic is not main focus of question, I will go back to kickoff meeting,

Important agenda of kickoff meeting is mentioned below

1.    Project vision: we will try understanding from customer or their representative (SME) about project objectives and business case

2.    Success Criteria: How the project success will be measured and what would be the acceptance criteria.

3.    Scope: What will be done during project activities and what work is not included in project.

4.    Stakeholders: Stakeholder identification is ongoing process however in kick off meeting we will try to find as many stakeholders as possible.

5.    Risks: We will try to find any event that may be positively or negatively affect the project or project outcome, if we find any thread or opportunity, response planning will be done accordingly.

6.    Responsibility: When project kick off meeting finishes, everyone should know that they are doing and what are their tasks dependencies.

Kickoff meeting will provide enough information for planning which would be in multiple layers, like strategic planning, release planning, and iteration planning with appropriate details by using rolling wave technique to equalize the predictability of outcomes with ability to exploit to opportunities.