Essential Agile Kickoff Meeting
Effective communication skills are essential for all involved in a project using any Agile approach! A kickoff is a short session for the team responsible for developing a solution to understand the objectives, accept them as realistic, and feel empowered and inspired to deliver a solution. This template has been created considering the DSDM principle "Communicate continuously and clearly" which underpins many the Agile principle of "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools". DSDM is an Agile method that focuses on the full project lifecycle, from Kickoff to Close-Out or Retrospective.
A kickoff is vital for effective teamwork and to ensure transparency. As the name suggests, it kicks off an allocated timebox and outlines the objectives. It is not a meeting to find the solutions, but rather to equip team members with clear objectives to empower them to find the solutions.
The agile approach favors face-to-face communication, and a kickoff can be done virtually or in person, depending on if the team is co-located or remote. The key objectives of a kickoff are to:
- Review objectives for the timebox and understand what is to be achieved
- Ensure that the deliverables are still feasible within the time box, and re-plan if this isn't possible
- Agree on the acceptance criteria for each deliverable
- Review the availability of all team members who will participate in this time box and decide on roles and take ownership of responsibilities.
- Highlight any known dependencies
The beauty of templates is that you can adjust them to fit your own team's needs. These are the starting blocks to your Agile kickoff and are yours to move around as you see fit!
