Kickoff Agenda & Exit Criteria

Kickoff exists to create alignment, not to hold a meeting. It succeeds when everyone leaves agreeing on scope, roles, timeline, and how we’ll communicate — not when the calendar invite ends.

Inputs → agenda → exit

flowchart LR
  subgraph In["Inputs"]
    S["Signed SOW"]
    B["Scoped backlog"]
    T["Team assigned"]
  end
  In --> AG["Kickoff agenda"]
  AG --> EX["Exit: alignment on<br/>scope / roles /<br/>timeline / comms"]

Attendees

Side	Who
Us	PM (Firas Alhawasli), BA (Samaha Alhaw), relevant Tech Lead(s)
Client	Sponsor / decision-maker, product owner, key stakeholder(s)

Agenda

1. Scope walkthrough — MoSCoW Must/Should, and an explicit read-out of what’s out of scope.
2. Roles & RACI — who decides, who reviews, who signs off. PM is Accountable for delivery.
3. Timeline & cadence — milestones from the SOW, the 2-week cadence, demo dates.
4. Communication plan — channels, status format, escalation path.
5. Dependencies & risks — what we need from the client and by when (from the risk register).
6. Definition of Ready / Done — the quality gates the board enforces.

Exit criteria

Kickoff is done when we have written agreement on:

• Scope — both sides can state what’s in and what’s out.
• Roles — named decision-maker and sign-off owner on the client side.
• Timeline — milestone dates and the first demo date are on the calendar.
• Comms — channel, status cadence, and escalation path are agreed.

Caution

“We met and it went well” is not an exit. If any of the four — scope, roles, timeline, comms — is still vague, kickoff isn’t done.

Precedes the build; the rhythm from here is the Communication Cadence.