roll project kick-off into project planning? just dont … - combine kick off and planning.pdf ·...

Roll project kick-off into project planning? Just don’t do it!


You need to get the project done, so it’s sensible to cut things down when you

can. The trouble is that it isn’t actually sensible to combine kick-off (you may

know it as start-up) and project planning (project initiation). That’s despite

seemingly authoritative guidance you read sometimes. Strangely you are more

than likely to slow your project down if you effectively miss out kick-off and go

straight into planning, and you will speed things up if you do kick-off correctly.

This paper is to remind you what you’re missing if you leave it out. It also gives

some really practical advice on running kick-off quickly and efficiently.

pro

ject

man

agem

en

t an

d p

roje

ct g

ove

rnan

ce

advi

ce, i

nfo

rmat

ion

an

d d

iscu

ssio

n p

aper

s

by

nic

k gr

aham

map

m

insp

iran

du

m lt

d

practical advice

ideas to think about

guidance and direction

discussion

warning


© 2017 Nick Graham and Inspirandum Ltd ::::: 1

Nick Graham is a successful author, consultant and trainer in the field of

project management and project governance. He is the author of the UK

edition of Project Management for Dummies and a number of other project

titles and is also co-author of the ISO compliant PRIME® project management

method. Nick is a member of the Association for Project Management.

© Inspirandum and Nick Graham 2017. This paper may be freely circulated

provided that it is circulated complete and unchanged and provided that no

charge is made for it.

The views expressed in this paper are the personal opinions of Nick Graham and

are offered in good faith to be helpful in delivering projects successfully.

However, readers and organisations are fully responsible for their own actions

or inaction following any advice put forward in the paper. Nick Graham and

Inspirandum Limited accept no responsibility in any form for such actions,

inaction or the consequences of either.

Trademark acknowledgements: The Inspirandum head and name logo is a

registered trade mark of Inspirandum Limited. PRIME® is a registered trade mark

associated with the PRIME project management method. ‘For Dummies’® is a

registered trade mark of John Wiley and Sons Limited. PRINCE2® is a registered

trade mark of AXELOS Limited.

Time pressure and leaving out kick-off (start-up)

Projects are often under time pressure from the outset. You may want to, or be

encouraged to, look for anything that will reduce the time needed for planning

and get on with the main technical work of the project. Some have argued that

one way of doing this, even in most projects, is to ‘combine’ kick-off and project

planning. That means, effectively, leaving out kick-off and going straight into

the planning stage. What’s the harm? Kick-off covers the same ground as

planning anyway, though with only a subset of the information and with far less

detail.

In the project management community some have strongly promoted this view

that kick-off and the project planning stage can be combined. That sort of advice

has even surfaced in the manual to the PRINCE2® method that so many business

managers have studied.

The problem is that the suggestion nearly always understates the value of kick-

off within the project; a value that is often significant and can be very

considerable. This short paper is to re-state the importance of kick-off and to

remind you just what you will be missing if you leave it out! There’s also a bit of

advice on getting the project moving quickly but still keep kick-off. In fact it’s

Note: You may know kick-off as start-up, and the project planning stage as project

initiation. Different approaches use different names.

Nick Graham MAPM



better than that because kick-off will help you go fast while leaving it out is more

than likely to slow you up.

Where exactly is kick-off or 'start up’?

Kick-off is the bit before the project, as shown in the diagram. As you can see,

kick-off isn’t a project stage – it pre-dates the project and therefore the project

stages. Because it isn’t part of the project, some organisations fund project kick-

offs separately – they don’t open a project budget until the project actually

starts.

The place of kick-off and the planning stage in relation to the whole project

Kick-off is preparatory work, and the information from it is normally recorded in

an Outline Charter, sometimes known as Project Brief.

Project planning comes after kick-off in a planning stage, the first stage of the

project. The work done here is recorded in full Project Charter covering the

strategic elements of the project, and a Project Management Plan (PMP)

covering the more tactical bits of planning, such as the Risk Plan. Sometimes

the Charter and PMP are combined in a single document known by names such

as Project Definition Document (PDD) or Project Initiation Documentation (PID).

Neither kick-off nor the planning stage have anything to do with the technical

work of the project; that’s all in the delivery stages. Rather they are to do with

establishing what the project is about, checking what resource and constraints

and seeing if the project is worth running. If it is worth running then work

continues to set up the project management.

Sticking the two together – let’s get on with planning

The problem about sticking the two together, which effectively means leaving

out kick-off, is that the suggestion nearly always understates the value of kick-

off within the project. That value that is significant and can often be very

considerable. But as you’re reading this paper, you probably have some doubts

about that. And the people and publications saying that you can run without

kick-off

planning

delivery stage 2

delivery stage 1

closurestage

the project

Outline Charter

Project CharterProject Management Plan



kick-off must be knowledgeable. Added to that you do need projects to get

moving quickly so surely it is great news that such people are saying you can

leave something out.

Please help me out with my project! Okay, let’s try this out and see what you think. I could do with your help with a

project that I’m going to be running. Please get a pad of paper and a pencil and

you have 6 hours for the task. Here’s the assignment. Are you ready?

Please plan my project.

Okay, a straightforward instruction. Six hours then, starting from … NOW! And

you’d better get busy because there’s an awful lot to do and you only have six

hours to do it in.

Well, did you get started or are you thinking that I’ve lost the plot somewhere?

Assuming you had been willing to help me, you couldn’t have done so. Instead

of starting the planning you would have come up with a host of questions.

So what exactly is your project about?

What are the objectives – saving money, improving a service, fixing a problem or something else?

Who is involved, such as the Sponsor and Project Manager?

Is project delivery needed by a particular time?

What is the budget and what staff resource is available?

Are there any constraints, such as legal factors or site security?

Are you sure it’s worth doing? … and you may have had more questions as well.

So, welcome to kick-off because those are exactly the sort of questions it is there

to answer. What I asked you to do was to go straight into project planning – the

planning stage – and I left out kick-off. The assignment, you remember, was

‘Please plan my project’. But you couldn’t. You didn’t have the basic

information that you needed to get the planning started. Only when this

information was provided would you be able to start work to draw up a

meaningful plan.

Think about what just happened. Instead of speeding things up by leaving out

kick-off, I actually stopped you dead in your tracks.

The logic of kick-off The problem with so many brilliant project ideas is that they don’t turn out to

be quite so brilliant after all. It’s much better to have a quick look at a project

idea, and throw it out if it’s not good, than to start into the detailed planning

only to find later that the project isn’t worth it. Even if you decide that it is worth

going ahead, or even if the project is mandatory, it helps to get the high level

view and understand the basics of the project before you get into detailed

planning. But anyway, how can you determine what to do in planning unless

you understand the characteristics of the project. For example, how much

More haste, less speed.

Old proverb



planning time do you need to devote to risk analysis? How much time for quality

planning. Unless you already know, for example, that the project is high quality

but low risk, you can’t get your act together properly with the planning stage

anyway.

The argument for having a clear project kick-off before getting into planning is

logical and just about unassailable. There are three basic reasons to run kick-off

before project planning and separately:

To understand what the project is about (scope) and its characteristics (such as time-critical, high-risk etc.)

To get basic information together which is needed for the planning such as who will be taking which roles in the project, what resource and money is available and any constraints (such as when staff will be available)

To have a quick look at the potential project to decide if it really is worth doing or, if it is mandatory, to know how you are going to set about it.

But those are just the basic reasons. Just to make the case even more solid there

are other big advantages too, towards the end of this paper you will find an

outline of them. Oh yes, and the amazingly good news is that done properly,

kick-off doesn’t usually take long to do so that is even more reason to keep it

intact.

A reminder of the key characteristics of kick-off In the real-life example in the panel above, the Outline for a large technical

project was done, almost completely, in a single morning. The workshop was

large and we had project staff there, together with project administrators,

organisational managers and engineers. There were about 50 staff in all. But I

went quickly, and the project could move on, using the solid base of information

Real-life example: I was asked to help a major European company by leading a

one-day workshop to help them move on with kick-off for a project which had got a

bit stuck. Before the workshop I looked at the document that they had been working

on and I was shocked to see that they had already taken twelve weeks, yet it wasn’t

close to being finished.

At the start of the workshop I asked the Project Sponsor how long he expected to

take to complete the document and sign it off. He said that they hoped to get it

done in another six weeks or so. The workshop was on a Wednesday and I challenged

him to have it finished and signed off by that Friday (three days, not six weeks). They

actually got it finished by the following Tuesday, which was still pretty slow in my

opinion, but a whole lot better than six more weeks.

A manager in the same organisation then asked me to run a kick-off workshop for

another, bigger project that he wanted to run. Being in at the start I could set it all

up differently. We got the nearly all of the Outline done in a single morning in a kick-

off workshop. It was written as notes on flip-chart pages, and at the end of the

morning someone went off to key those notes into an Outline document. The only

thing we didn’t finish was to finalise appointments to the Project Steering Group

(Project Board) because the Sponsor needed to go to talk to some people before

making a final decision on the roles.

Kick-off in 18 weeks or

just ½ a day?



and understanding from that morning. We had also clearly established that the

project was justified and worth doing.

Kick-off isn’t

The full planning in detail

A bureaucratic procedure done only because ‘the book’ says to do it

Long-winded

Focused on documentation - filling the forms in

Kick-off is

Fast and dynamic to get things moving

To develop a clear and agreed vision of what the project is about

To understand key characteristics, such as that the project is high risk

To decide who should so what if the project goes ahead

To kick-start the project, if it is to go ahead, with some energy and enthusiasm

To decide, at the end, if the project should start and proceed with full planning, or stop right here. If the project does go ahead, the planning can now proceed with a solid base of understanding and information.

How long should it take?

Now here’s where a lot of people go badly wrong, and that is what makes them

want to leave out kick-off and get straight into full planning to get the project

moving.

Kick-off may take a couple of weeks. It is more likely to take a couple of days. It

may even be done in a couple of hours. Remember, it’s a ‘sketch’, not the full

architect’s drawing. You should write down the answers to the questions and

that forms the Outline (Outline Charter) or Project Brief. Both words - Outline

and Brief - are good ones to remind you what level you should be aiming for

here.

Advantages of a separate kick-off

Finally, here are a few more advantages of running kick-off separately to

planning and before it, and a bit more information on the advantages already

mentioned.

Putting key information in place – to do planning well, you need to understand

the project (such as what the objectives are). Kick-off provides a solid foundation

for effective planning.

Understanding what will be involved in planning – how much effort will be

needed. If you know from kick-off that the project has a lot of risks, you will

know to devote significant time in the planning to risk analysis and planning. If

it is low risk then you won’t need too much time at all. Similarly, if you know

that there will be significant interfaces with other projects, you’re going to have

to talk with other project managers during the planning and make sure all of the



plans are properly coordinated. That too will take time and is very different to

a situation where your project has no dependencies at all on any other project.

Getting a common vision and shared understanding – the kick-off workshop is

a great place for making sure that everyone has the same idea about the project.

You may know from the project environment, and even outside it, that people

can use the same words but have very different understandings. Be sure too

that everyone understands and agrees the objectives. For example, in improving

the quality of a commercial product, the Quality Manager may have customer

satisfaction in mind where it is worth spending more to maintain a reputation

for high quality. The Finance Director may be wanting better quality to reduce

wastage and so reduce costs. He or she may not be at all happy about spending

out on project work to increase quality where it doesn’t show an immediate cash

saving.

Steven Covey says in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, ‘Begin

with the end in mind. He says “Before you climb the ladder, make sure it is

leaning against the right wall!” So before you climb the ladder (planning) make

sure you have it leaning against the right wall (kick-off). If you climb the ladder

by doing the detailed planning, then realise it is against the wrong wall and you

have the basics wrong, you have to climb down (!) and start all over. Much

better, much cheaper and much faster, to get it right first time.

Checking that a contract that will be profitable – and turning down one that

won’t be. Some organisations bid for work and are really pleased every time that

they win. But why be pleased of you win loss-making contracts?

Changing the project boundary – remember, the Outline is a sketch. It can be

that while the project scope seems fine at the outset, a bit of discussion results

in changes to the boundary to get an even better balance of benefits. This is

Real-life example: I was running a project training course for a growing

commercial company. A senior manager was on the course and said that kick-off

wasn’t really relevant because there was no decision to make about starting the

project. If they won a contract to install their highly specialised computer software,

they would run the project to do the work for the customer.

However, as we discussed the place of kick-off he began to change his mind. It

emerged that the organisation had difficulties with some customers. The problem

was that significant customer input was needed for a successfully implementation.

Where a customer didn’t play their part, it caused huge problems and a lot of extra

work – all coming out of the profit for the work. In many such cases the customer

wasn’t happy at the end and then blamed the company for a bad product, when

actually it was the customer’s fault.

The senior manager decided that kick-off was actually a good idea for them to check

if the work was worth accepting. If it was going to run at a loss because the customer

commitment wasn’t there, with the danger that the product would then also be

criticised in public, it would be better to say ‘no’ and not bid; the project wasn’t

justified.

Turning down contract

work following kick-off.

Steven Covey

The Seven Habits of

Highly Effective People

ISBN-10: 0684858398

ISBN-13: 978-0684858395



something that the management writer Tom Peters calls ‘re-framing the

project’. While you are dealing with the Outline or Brief, you can make

adjustments to the boundary fairly easily – it’s like a sketch at that point. If you

leave out kick-off and go straight into detailed planning, and then it is decided

that the boundary is wrong, there is much more work to do to make the change.

Check that the good idea is a good idea – and a surprising number are not. The

gap between Kick-off and Planning is valuable to bring an immediate stop to

work if it is clear that the project is not worth running, despite early views that

it will be. There is a tendency to think all projects are worthwhile, particularly if

they are being strongly promoted by someone (an enthusiastic ‘sponsor’). That

enthusiasm is often accompanied by assumptions that the project will be

cheaper and take less effort than is actually the case. This problem is described

in the UK by HM Treasury as ‘optimism bias’. A fast but clear headed review of

the potential project can bring things to a halt quickly if it is found that it is not

viable after all, and so avoid wasting time and resource doing the more detailed

planning in Planning. Too many projects start, and are stopped later, where it

could have been found out at the beginning that they were not viable.

Kick-off has an important function here because is not always readily apparent

that the project is not justified. That function is the separation of the potential

project from the person who wants it. Kick-off takes the project idea out of the

domain of the individual and into corporate ownership. The look at the Outline

Business Case must establish that there is genuine corporate benefit at the end

of that project’s rainbow and that the project is in line with corporate strategy.

This makes great inroads into dealing with the problem of ‘pet projects’.

Finally

Finally then, Kick-off can be done really quickly. For some projects it may only

take a couple of hours. But the benefits of this pause to ‘check bearings’ before

going on to plan the project in detail are out of all proportion to the minimal

amount of work involved in staying with the method here. Keeping Kick-off

separate from Planning is a sensible thing and it is commended to you. Think

carefully before you leave out this valuable and logical project preparation.

PRIME® project method users

Kick-off is an essential element of the PRIME® project management method and

it’s assumed that you won’t leave it out. PRIME emphasises that kick-off should

run quickly in the first part of its ‘Outline and Planning Stage’ and strongly

recommends doing the work in a workshop. That brings the benefits of a shared

understanding of what the project is about and also speed.

PRINCE2® users

PRINCE2 is a good method overall, and where something has been there for a

long time there are reasons for it. While it is important to adapt PRINCE2 to

meet different project requirements, think carefully before making structural

changes to ‘cut corners’ or you may start to lose the real power of the method.

Optimism bias

A disease affecting senior

managers which makes them

over-optimistic in two ways:

1. They think that the

project will be much

cheaper and shorter

than it ever could be.

2. They think that the

benefits will be

considerably greater

than they really will be.

Inspirandum project management courses equip you with practical knowledge,

vital understanding and key skills to help you control and manage projects

successfully. If you have studied for qualifications such as PRINCE2® you will still

find these courses of enormous help because they focus on the practical, not

merely structure and documents.

Nick Graham runs courses and workshops ‘in-company’ for private, public and

not-for-profit sector organisations throughout the UK and further afield. To get

more information and talk about a course for your organisation, please contact

us – the details are below.

Project Governance Briefing for Top Managers

Project Governance and Project Boards

Introduction to Project Management

Practical Project Management

Project Workshops

w: www.inspirandum.com

e: [email protected]

http://www.inspirandum.com/

roll project kick-off into project planning? just dont … - combine kick off and planning.pdf ·...

Documents