We run the same 14-day kickoff on every engagement. The pattern behind it is blunt: when access is shared and a draft sprint plan exists within one week, clients renew. When the kickoff drags, the engagement is usually churned by month four. So we turned the kickoff into twenty binary checklist items and audit it like delivery work.
Days 1–3: Access and baseline
The first phase removes obstacles before work begins:
- File signed agreements in the shared workspace.
- Provision access to the four primary systems relevant to the engagement.
- Establish a single communication channel with named escalation contacts.
- Export and timestamp baseline metrics.
- Send a one-page kickoff brief: team members, working hours, SLAs, meeting cadence.
Days 4–7: Pod assembly and scope sign-off
By the end of week one, the client knows their delivery team and has confirmed sprint-one scope:
- Pod introductions with names, functions, and prior experience.
- A 12-week sprint plan draft with explicit out-of-scope items.
- Documented working agreements: response times and escalation procedures.
- Tool stack confirmed in writing.
- Written client sign-off on sprint-one scope.
Days 8–11: First sprint plan and working dashboards
The engagement shifts from onboarding to active delivery:
- Sprint-one tickets created, assigned, and dated.
- A read-only dashboard published showing engagement metrics.
- First weekly status update sent.
- Risk register established with the three priority risks.
- An initial work item shipped for momentum.
Days 12–14: Kickoff session and first decisions live
The formal kickoff happens at the end — not the beginning — so the conversation is grounded in two weeks of real learning:
- A 90-minute kickoff workshop covering vision, success metrics, and a sprint demo.
- Initial decisions resolved and documented.
- 90-day plan signed off with milestones at days 30, 60, and 90.
- Standing meeting cadence confirmed.
- A retrospective on the kickoff process itself.
Why binary items
The checklist is twenty items with only two states each, designed to prevent two failure modes: over-documentation that stalls work, and under-documentation that produces weeks of silence. "Item 14 was signed off on day 11" is auditable. "Kickoff went well" is not.