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Project kickoff template

Align a new project on goals, scope, roles and cadence

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Use it when

A new cross-functional project is starting and the team needs one shared page for goals, scope, owners and milestones before work begins

Who it's for

ManagerProduct managerOperations

Filled example

The template filled in for a made-up company, so you can see what good looks like.

Northwind self-serve onboarding

Author: Priya Raman · Date: 2026-03-02

Why this project

New Northwind accounts wait an average of 4.5 days for a sales engineer to configure their first warehouse sync. Thirty-eight percent of trials expire before that call happens. If we do nothing, the Q3 plan to double trial volume will simply double the backlog on two sales engineers.

Goals & success criteria

  • Median time from signup to first successful sync under 30 minutes, with no human involved
  • Trial-to-paid conversion up from 11% to 15% by end of Q3
  • Sales engineer onboarding calls cut by half, measured over the four weeks after launch

Scope

In

  • Guided setup wizard for the three most common sources (Postgres, Snowflake, BigQuery)
  • In-app sample dataset so a trial can see value before connecting real data
  • Onboarding checklist email sequence (days 1, 3 and 7)

Out

  • Custom connectors and on-prem agents (still sales-assisted)
  • Pricing or plan changes
  • Redesign of the main dashboard

Team & roles

Name Role Responsibility
Priya Raman PM Scope, success metrics, launch call
Tomas Ellery Eng lead Wizard and sync backend
June Okafor Designer Wizard flow and empty states
Rafael Duarte Lifecycle marketing Email sequence
Dana Whitlock VP Sales (sponsor) Signs off on launch

Milestones

Milestone Owner Due
Scope sign-off Priya Raman 2026-03-06
Wizard beta (internal) Tomas Ellery 2026-04-03
Email sequence live Rafael Duarte 2026-04-10
Public launch Priya Raman 2026-04-24
Mermaid diagram (drawn as a picture in reph)
gantt
    title Milestones
    dateFormat YYYY-MM-DD
    section Plan
    Scope sign-off        :m1, 2026-03-02, 5d
    section Build
    Wizard beta           :m2, after m1, 28d
    Email sequence        :m3, 2026-03-23, 18d
    section Launch
    Public launch         :milestone, m4, 2026-04-24, 0d

Communication cadence

Thirty-minute sync every Tuesday. Async updates go in the #proj-self-serve channel each Friday, and Priya posts a weekly status doc in reph for Dana.

Risks

  • BigQuery service-account setup is confusing for non-admins; may need a fallback to sales-assisted
  • Sample dataset could inflate "first sync" numbers without real intent; we will track real-source syncs separately

Decisions log

Date Decision Made by
2026-03-02 Launch with three sources only Priya Raman
2026-03-02 Sales keeps on-prem deals Dana Whitlock

Next steps

The template

Show the blank template

Project kickoff

Author: [your name] · Date: [date]

Why this project

The problem or opportunity that justifies spending a team's time on this, and what happens if we don't do it.

Goals & success criteria

What "done and successful" looks like, not just "done." Make at least one criterion measurable.

Scope

In

The deliverables this project commits to.

Out

Naming what is out is the cheapest scope negotiation you will ever have.

Team & roles

Name Role Responsibility

Milestones

Three to seven milestones, each with one owner. Update the dates in the chart when the table changes.

Milestone Owner Due
Mermaid diagram (drawn as a picture in reph)
gantt
    title Milestones
    dateFormat YYYY-MM-DD
    section Plan
    Kickoff and scope sign-off :m1, 2026-01-05, 5d
    section Build
    First milestone            :m2, after m1, 15d
    Second milestone           :m3, after m2, 15d
    section Launch
    Launch                     :milestone, m4, after m3, 0d

Communication cadence

How and how often the team syncs, and where async updates live. Set this explicitly so it isn't reinvented mid-project.

Risks

What could derail this, known at kickoff. A risk register can track more as they emerge.

Decisions log

Date Decision Made by

Next steps

Questions

When should the kickoff doc be written?
Before the kickoff meeting, so the meeting reviews it instead of writing it
How detailed should the milestones be?
Three to seven milestones with one owner each; tasks belong in your tracker
Who should review it?
The sponsor and every person named in the team table

Fill it with your agent

Connect Claude to reph over MCP, then paste this. The draft arrives as suggestions you accept or reject section by section. How to connect Claude.

Find my reph doc "Project kickoff" with search_docs, then read it with read_doc. Draft goals, scope, team table and milestone gantt from the project brief, the sponsor's notes and linked planning tickets. Mark dates you had to guess. File it with suggest_edit, one replace_section op per section (heading line kept) so each can be accepted alone. Ask each open question (unclear scope edges, unowned milestones, inferred risks) with add_comment quoting that section's heading line, then call request_review with a one-line summary.

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