PM Excellence Academy
Grace Design Studios · Module 7 of 12
The Kickoff Readiness Board
Project Kickoff · Interactive Tool · Score the kickoff before you call it
PM Excellence Academy
Grace Design Studios · Module 7 of 12
Project Kickoff · Interactive Tool · Score the kickoff before you call it
Module Home › Kickoff Readiness Board
A kickoff is not ready because the date is on the calendar. It is ready when every unknown has a name and an owner. This board scores that, stage by stage, against the Oakhaven Public Safety Campus.
Where this tool sits
This is the gate between Module 6 and the kickoff itself. Build the plan in Module 5, build the communication plan in Module 6, then run this board before the meeting is called. It carries the same three stages the Quick Reference carries: Prepare, Execute, Follow through.
Stage 1 · Prepare
Stage 1 is Establish Clarity, done in private, before anyone is in the room. Start with the sentence, because a project that cannot be described in one sentence is not ready for a kickoff. Then set every item to one of three states. Confirmed means the answer exists and the team agrees on it. Open with an owner means the answer does not exist yet and a named person is closing it. Not started means nobody is working on it.
This is the readiness gate, and it comes before the thirteen items rather than after them. Write the sentence the client would sign. The checks below are mechanical. They test length and they test for a verb of outcome. They cannot judge meaning, and they are not a substitute for asking the client.
Words
0
Characters
0
Checks passed
0 of 3
Name the owner for every open item. An owner is a person, not a discipline.
Confirmed
0
Open with an owner
0
Not started
13
Stage 2 · Execute
Stage 2 is what happens in the room. Five things get aligned out loud with everyone present who will be held to them, the playback runs before anything the team produced, and the moments that deliver Experience on purpose are designed in advance rather than improvised.
Check an alignment only when it is on the agenda with a named owner and a written output. An alignment that is planned in someone’s head is not planned.
On the agenda
0 of 5
Left to the room
5
Playback runs before the five. Read the success definition of the client back, in the words of the client, before presenting anything the team produced.
An Experience Point is a designed moment in the kickoff that visibly serves the stated Experience criterion of the client. Run every row through the three properties test. Row 1 is the worked Oakhaven model. Rows 2 and 3 are yours.
Stage 2b · The first ninety seconds
Everything above this point is written. A kickoff is spoken, and the move that assigns leadership is the first ninety seconds of it. Write the three plays here on your own live project rather than on Oakhaven, then say them out loud before the room is real.
Write what you will actually say, not a description of what you will say. Short is correct. Ninety seconds of speech is roughly two hundred words in total across the three plays.
Write the success definition of your client in the words your client used. Put those words inside quotation marks, because they belong to the client rather than to you, and name the person who said them.
0 words
Name the one plan element that exists because of that sentence. One element, named specifically. A schedule, a protected week, a decide by date, a line in the communication plan. Not the plan in general.
0 words
Write the question that hands the floor back. It is one sentence and it is the last thing you say. Whatever follows it belongs to the client.
0 words
Stand up. Read your success sentence from Stage 1, then run the three plays in order, out loud, with nobody listening. Time it. Ninety seconds is the target, and going long is the common failure rather than going short.
Then play it back against three questions, and answer each one honestly before ticking it.
A project manager who has said these three things once has said them. A project manager who has only read them has not.
Stage 3 · Follow through
Alignment starts decaying the moment the room clears. Four things close it. All four are due inside the same 24 hours.
Check each item as it is genuinely done, not as it is genuinely intended.
Closed
0 of 4
Still open at hour 24
4
Hours on the clock
24
The record
The summary assembles the success sentence, the readiness verdict, every open item with its owner, the designed Experience Points, and the three plays you wrote in Stage 2b. Copy it into the Kickoff Brief.
The transfer test
The three properties of an Experience Point are portable. That is what makes them a test rather than a preference, and the proof that you hold the test is that you can hand it to somebody else and it still works in their hands.
Do this before your kickoff, with one person who will be in the room with you.
If they can name the property the failing item is missing, the test transferred. If they cannot, you are holding a checklist rather than a test, and the difference will show in the room.