Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Hayden Slaughter

Each week I answer a question from my mentee on the subject of UX.

Q: How can I run a kick-off meeting/workshop, to ensure a project is going to hit the ground running?

Ensuring your project hits the ground running is vital to the long term success of the project and team moral. It can be make or break on day one. Handled well and with a clear understanding on how to kick off the project effectively you can make sure that you and your team are on the front foot from the start.

What does hitting the ground running mean for you and your project?

In an ideal world if there were no restrictions or barriers what would it mean to hit the ground running. I’m a big believer in visualisation so taking some time to map out what you want to achieve can pay dividends in providing clarity and focus. Visualise it in your mind and dig into the details, how do the conversations go? what topics are discussed? what agreements are made? The more detail the better, your mind has an incredible ability to turn these into reality once you know what it is you need to achieve.

People

Make sure the right people are in the room. If they’re not able to attend (try hard, really hard, to get them to attend) then make sure you speak to them immediately after your kick off meeting to bring them up to speed and ensure they are onboard with what you are trying to achieve. The people you want are those that are involved from a team perspective and stakeholders that will have a say or opinion on the project. These people can often be hidden or not easily identifiable so make sure you do some digging to discover who they are.

Questions

There are various project kick off canvases available but this is the most basic version that I use for every piece of work I do. Sometimes I do it on a canvas other times I just have the answers in my head. It depends on the circumstances but the main outcome I want to achieve is to answer the questions.

The basic project kick off canvas

This is what I consider the basic questions that need answering in order for all involved to be pulling in the same direction and for the project to hit the ground running. If you can fill in the blanks and ensure that everyone is able to echo the same answers then you will have created shared understanding.

The outcomes you are hoping to achieve from doing this are:

Understanding of why you are doing it
Consensus on what you want to achieve
Agreement on how each person or department will contributing

Action:

The next step after building consensus, agreement and understanding is to turn that into action. The level of granularity will vary depending on the type of session you run. But at the very least make sure everyone knows what the next steps are directly after the meeting. This gives the team and the project momentum and gets the ball rolling.

Once the meeting or workshop has finished the hard work has only just begun. You need to drive home the points, re-assert their importance and make sure everyone is working towards achieving them. Not just paying lip service whilst in the room.

Summary:

Get the right people in the room
Answer the questions:
Audience need and why
Stakeholder need and why
Metrics to show why and how
Challenges and constraints you will face
What success looks like at the end
Shared understanding, consensus and agreement
Define next steps

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Project kick offs that hit the ground running was originally published in prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Project kick offs that hit the ground running

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