What a Kickoff Has to Settle Before Work Starts
A kickoff has to settle four things before work starts: what is in scope, who decides, when the milestones are, and what happens when something slips. Teams that leave any of the four to be worked out later spend the first month working them out instead of working.
The fourth is the one most often skipped and the one that causes the most damage. Every project slips somewhere, and a team that has not agreed in advance whether scope, date, or quality gives way will discover it during the argument rather than before it. The one thing to withhold is commercial terms and contingency: contract values, penalty clauses, and the internal margin position are not kickoff material and circulate badly.
The kickoff is laid out over seven scenes: one on the outcome the project exists to produce, one on scope and its boundary, one on roles and who decides what, one on the milestone schedule, one on how the team communicates and how often, one on the known risks, and one on the agreed response when something slips.
