Tip #6: ERP Project Kickoffs with with a Pep Rally

ERP project kickoff meetings are the business equivalent of pre-sports game locker room pep talks. These meetings should be used to motivate team members and to focus their efforts on tactical execution. A strong kick-off meeting can enhance a project’s chances of success. Conversely, a poorly organized meeting can undermine a project’s chances of success.

Generally, our firm will organize two separate ERP project kickoff meetings for our clients’ bigger IT projects.

The first type of meeting is a general meeting. At these meetings, we typically require attendance by ERP steering committee members, core team members and functional team members, company executives, and staff. Often, we host these meetings at an offsite location. An offsite meeting drives home the message that the project represents the start of organizational change; change from “business as usual”. It also symbolizes the priority that the project holds over daily work routines.

Here are two additional keys to a productive general meeting:

• Set a formal meeting agenda, including: opening address, overview of project roles and responsibilities, and presentation of key project elements; and
• Have the CEO deliver the opening address. This reinforces and communicates senior management’s commitment to the project.

The second type of kick-off meeting, the core team meeting, is a tactical and organizational meeting. When facilitating these types of meetings, we ensure that the core team establishes measurable success factors, revisits the project timeline, details team member responsibilities, and sets a framework for issues resolution.

Strong kick-off meetings are critical. They set the tone for your high-pressure IT projects. Facilitate well-structured kick-off meetings and watch your project teams sprint out of the gates!

Don’t miss next week’s ERP implementation tip. I will breakdown the keys to developing actionable and measureable project roadmaps.

Good luck with your ERP implementation projects!

Your POV (post comments below)

• What kick-off tactics have you used to fire-up the teams?
• Do you agree that kick-off meetings are useful, or are they a waste of time?
• Do you have any good or bad experiences with kick-off meetings?

In this series of weekly ERP project management tips, we walk you through an ERP implementation project using Pemeco’s “Milestone Deliverables” project management methodology.

You can buy our project management book and CD of template forms “Milestone Deliverables: The Hands-On Approach to Implementing ERP Projects”. Click here to learn more. Learn about our ERP implementation services by clicking here.

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