Kick-Off

Your project kick-off is where you get to set the course for the rest of the project. The old proverb “Well begun is half done” may not be literally true, but I’d say that “Badly begun means never getting done.” This is your opportunity to get it right. If you are lucky, you’ve had the chance to be involved in the project from the earliest stages, and the vision and course are already well set. But often this isn’t the case, so you need to nail a few things down.

Identify the Players

You need to know who the key stakeholders are. There are really two groups to get a handle on: who will be on the project team and who will be on the governance committee. These will probably be different individuals, though there may be some overlap. You want to know who the final decision makers will be both during the project and after delivery. You want to know who is going to make up the top two layers of the governance hierarchy (Figure 12-1).