The kickoff call is the whole project
Most projects go wrong in the first hour, not the last week. Here is the agenda I use to make the kickoff do real work.
Every project I have rescued had the same root cause: the kickoff was a formality. Introductions, a timeline slide, everyone nods. Six weeks later nobody agrees what done means.
A kickoff is not a welcome ceremony. It is the cheapest chance you will ever get to surface risk.
Agenda
Four questions I never skip
None of these are technical. All of them are expensive to answer late.
Ask these in the first hour
- Who signs off, and who can veto after sign-off?
- What does success look like in numbers, ninety days after launch?
- What has been tried before, and why did it stop?
- What is genuinely fixed: budget, date, or scope? Only one can be.
Write the answers down in the room and read them back. If the client hesitates on the veto question, you have just found your biggest delivery risk on day one instead of day sixty.
Scope creep is almost never new ideas. It is old assumptions finally becoming visible.