Project kick-off

Steps to get a project started cleared with the contract signed, the upfront payment settled, and the team lined up, are all good indicators the curtains are ready to roll, and the show is about to start.

And, like at any show, artists don't jump right in doing backflips and pirouettes off the bat. Instead, we’re inevitably presented with the boring “Please take a moment to locate your nearest emergency exit and at this time, please turn off all cellphones and other electronic devices” announcement first.

We have that too, but we call it kick-off – a quick but essential meeting that will help us hit the ground running and make sure that the project proceeds as smoothly as possible.

Kick-off meeting

The kick-off meeting has a few (very clear) goals that will be listed below without further ado. Or pirouettes.

• Know each other. This is probably the first time we'll meet each other, apart from sales, so take the time to get along, know each other's names, and responsibilities.

• Know the project and the scope. You probably know what the project is about by now. If you don't, you should. Sales should have made sure you were brought up to speed before kick-off. However, still nothing better than hearing from the client with a high-level overview of the project, the vision, the goals, the target audience, the user base, the existing data, the expectations, the possible constraints (like browser support for web projects, M.V.P.’s must-haves, competitors), and perhaps most importantly, the scope.

• Clarify loose ends. If any knots have been left untied, make sure to clarify them, regardless of their topic.

• Explain how we work. Make sure the client knows what they are going to be dealing with and which expectations we have on them. Things like the tools we use, the pace of the iterations, the feedback we expect to get, the cadence of our development cycles, the weekly syncs, and any other things you may see fit – to which you may draw inspiration from How we collaborate. Better to clear any possible constraints upfront, rather than too late down the line.

• Set up tools. During the kick-off, you should set up Slack and Notion, inviting the required counterparts on the client team to them.

• Be extra clear on the next steps. As the name gives it away, be clear about what comes next. Never forget to always keep clients in the loop as part of our commitment to Transparency and Trust, as stated in How we collaborate. Stuff like agreeing on starting dates, timelines, and team allocation are to be covered here.

• Sum it all up. At the end of the boring announcement we call kick-off, everyone should know exactly what to do next and what to achieve before the next meeting. Wrap the meeting up with a checklist of actions to take (for both parties) and share it with the client.

Oh, and if you see fit, we have an entire Working with Significa section available in this Handbook, which covers many things that can be really handy for kick-offs.

While we will have plenty more opportunities to dive further into the project details, the Kick-off Meeting is key to setting the stage for our collaboration and getting us rowing in the same direction! Speaking of rowing in the same direction, we have a pretty good analogy about rowing in Mission and values.

Tools

Some of our tools are used just for internal teams, while others are intended to help you connect and align with clients. Here's an overview of the tools we typically use throughout the collaboration.

Notion

Notion is where we manage all of our documentation and align it with our clients.

It will be your responsibility to take the lead in creating a project workspace within Notion to store and manage all of the deliverable details, meeting notes, and much more that come out of our design and development processes.

After preparing the project workspace based on our templates, you should share it with the client so everyone knows exactly where to look for things when in need.

Because when in doubt, check Notion!

Linear

Once you agree on a roadmap with the client, you must create tickets for every deliverable within Linear.

Our designers and developers use these tickets to track what's done, in progress, and coming up next. In addition, Linear gives the project managers a high-level overview of the status and a fun (yes, I said fun!) set of charts to track progress toward shared goals and deadlines.

While the Notion project workspace is shared with clients, Linear is not. Instead, it is purely for internal usage and our team's eyeballs only.

These tickets are like that nasty closet where you shove all the cleaning gear, like the mops and brooms and the dust cloths you want to hide when you have guests over. That's Linear, the closet.

So, it's best to let the designers and developers deal with cleaning gear, while giving our clients the perfect perspective of our immaculate, architecturally beautiful home. We don't want clients pointing the spiderwebs in the corners we haven't swept nor the dusty baseboards we haven't got the time to clean. In other words, we don't want clients micro-managing our team, and Linear is a gateway to it.

However, as stated in How we collaborate, once Trust is developed to the point where Transparency can bloom to its maximum potential, we won't mind sharing our dirty corners.

Slack

We use Slack to communicate internally and with every single one of our clients. With clients, we use it to share project updates, ask questions, iterate, and offer reminders between weekly sync meetings, among other things that may pop up.

As written above, during the kick-off meeting, you must create two Slack channels – one for internal purposes within our Slack Workspace, typically named #[project-name]-internal, and another for communicating with the client.

For the latter case, there are four options:

• If the client is a paid user of Slack, then we can create a shared channel through Slack Connect.

• If the client isn't a paid user of Slack and is working as a solopreneur, then we could invite them as a guest to a shared channel in our Slack Workspace.

• If the client isn’t a paid user of Slack and has more than one team member they want to add to the channel, then they could invite us to their Slack Workspace. Alternatively, you can create a brand new Slack Workspace and invite everyone over.