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Client kickoffs are meetings or workshops that a team should hold when they first start working with a client. In Tech Fleet, we operate with new project teams every 11 weeks, and those teams hold client kickoffs every 11 weeks.
Client kickoffs help introduce the team to the client and build a shared understanding of the upcoming work. They allow space for the team to self-organize and figure out how they will collect information from clients in order to set the priority of work in near-term project work.
Teams will schedule meetings with a client to present their work and collect information from them.
Here's a workshop template for an Agile team to get together and hold a client kickoff meeting through a workshop. This workshop helps teams structure the collection of important information in order to form takeaways and action items for highest priority work during their project. This is modeled off of agency teams in the industry.
Here are the questions that we’ve determined to help teams kickoff, and we also provide space to provide your own questions:
Who are the audiences involved in this product?
What are the goals the business is trying to achieve?
List the products and services that the business uses to meet its goals. This could be existing, or something that doesn’t exist.
What are the problems that this product focuses on solving for users? For businesses?
How do these problems and audience pain points get solved in the world today?
In 5 years, what things will show that you have succeeded in your business efforts?
What would have happened in 5 years to deem the project a failure?
What motivates your audience that you know of?
What do you know about the different products out there trying to achieve the same goals?
What are they?
What kinds of things do they do well?
What kinds of gaps are in the products?
What don’t you know about the products that you want to explore?
Provide a summary of the work that’s already been done before Tech Fleet or in previous phases
Provide your thoughts on the highest priorities for our next 8 weeks of work
Provide your thoughts on near-term Milestones your business wants to achieve
The team should have a client kickoff as early in their project as possible. Doing so ensures that they are moving in the right direction based on client needs.
Client kickoffs are brief - Teams must be aware of the brevity of clients' time. Client kickoff workshops are meant to spend less time discussing and deciding by collecting the same key information any time new work happens.
Client kickoffs are structured - Client kickoff meetings are meant to get everyone into a room at the same time across all functions and build a shared understanding together. As such, they should be structured to collect information and get as much value out of the meetings as possible.
Everyone get together across all roles and make a list of questions as a team
Review the questions suggested on this workshop template
Create more questions on the workshop template based on the team’s consensus
Schedule this workshop with the client
Make a slide deck for the purposes of presenting to the client
Hold the workshop with the team and the client
Take note and document takeaways
After takeaways are formed, the full team should review the project phase roadmap and determine next steps for their priorities
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