Agile Project team Kick off meeting framework

     Current working environment

1. We work in an ever-changing environment and the only thing constant is “change”.  It must not be an un-common scenario when new agile teams are carved out/created to deliver a solution epics  OR a reorganization leaves you with an option of creating new Agile teams.
   
2. In this topic, I will list down important agenda items to be covered in an Agile Project Kick-off.  This helps the whole team to be aligned with Project/Product Goals.

When to conduct Agile Project Kick off?

1. Team receives a new feature/epic development.
2. Re-organization of Agile teams.
3. New teams are created/carved out.
4. Major policy, process changes around the environment we operate (agenda of the meeting will slightly vary).
5. New enhancement or a fresh project has to be started

Why we do an Agile Kick off?

1. Sets/Re-set ground rules for the team.
2. Baseline's team understanding on the project environment.
3. Introduce team members, operations, processes and shared artifacts.

Agenda and time box

Meet and Greet

Example of introduction

Outcomes of Meet and Greet

Project Overview

Provide project overview to the team so they help us achieve business objectives. Following are few topics which we should cover 

1.  Business Objectives
2.  Customer agreement: milestones with agreed dates
3.  Delivery approach: Any specific methodology Agile (Scrum, Kanban, 
4.  Scrumban, etc.) or Waterfall
5.  Estimates: Person days and revenue
6.  Key contacts: Name and email addresses of key project stakeholders
7.  Ownership and location:
8.  Risk and mitigation plan: Highlight any risk and available mitigation plan
9.  Issues: Highlight any current roadblocks to the success of project 

Development Process and tools eco-system

This part of the meeting should highlight the process of development, this may differ from team to team.  Based on few of my projects, I will have the following topics:

1. Discuss common tools and process and share the process for accessing these tools.

Example: 

Agile methodology adopted(Scrum/Kanban…), DevOps infrastructure and related tools, Bug tracker or QA tools.

2. Highlight the engineering process adopted by team.

Example: Code reviews, Pair programming,  Refactoring.

For example
QA team member provides initial data setup and hypothesis for the development)
Developer agrees to show demo and pair with QA and BA.

Comments

Share your thoughts and do update me what you do in your kick off meetings.