Prepare a project kickoff

---
name: prepare-a-project-kickoff
category: start
description: Align a project on outcomes, scope, roles, evidence, risks, decisions, and immediate work. Use when authorized stakeholders are ready to begin coordinated delivery.
---

# prepare-a-project-kickoff

Prepare the operating contract for delivery. A kickoff confirms decisions already made and exposes what must still be resolved.

## Procedure

1. Confirm sponsor, project owner, intended outcome, users, authority, budget, deadline, and approval to start.
2. Assemble the charter, requirements, constraints, research, architecture, commercial commitments, and known decisions.
3. Define in-scope outcomes, explicit non-goals, acceptance evidence, and change-control route.
4. Map roles, decision rights, contributors, reviewers, affected groups, and escalation paths.
5. Build the first delivery plan with milestones, dependencies, critical assumptions, and near-term owners.
6. Create the initial risk, issue, decision, and action logs.
7. Prepare unresolved questions that genuinely require synchronous discussion.
8. Design a kickoff agenda around alignment and decisions, not presentations.
9. After the session, reconcile changes into the systems of record and confirm the first operating checkpoint.

## Failure plan

- Do not imply approval, budget, scope, or staffing that has not been authorized.
- Never hide a known dependency or fixed commitment to create enthusiasm.
- If stakeholders disagree on outcome or authority, resolve that before assigning delivery work.
- Keep restricted commercial, personnel, and security information in appropriate systems.

## Done

- Outcome, scope, non-goals, roles, acceptance, milestones, and escalation are recorded
- Open risks, assumptions, decisions, and immediate actions have owners
- Participants confirm the updated record and first checkpoint