<aside> 🔗 Medium link: https://chinguyenthuy.medium.com/ep-1-2-junior-designer-101-ep-2-how-to-nail-your-next-kick-off-meetings-10-easy-tips-23823b833fe5

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BEFORE THE MEETING

Tip 1: PREPARE, PREPARE, and PREPARE

From my experience, this is the key component in deciding the success of a kick-off meeting.
The benefits are getting familiar with the project and having a clear understanding of the problem to solve.

Tip 2: Focus on the PROBLEMS & REQUIREMENTS, not the SOLUTION

It’s alright to spend 30 minutes to 1 hour just studying the brief beforehand. After that, you should be able to answer the following questions:****
- What is the goal?
- What is the problem?
- Where is the problem come from**?**
- Is the problem validated?

My working board for a kick-off meeting

My working board for a kick-off meeting

It would be fantastic if you could answer all of them! If not, that’s also alright.
You can save those questions for PM. He sure knows how to give you the answer. If he is not 100% sure, you will be the right person to validate it.

Tip 3: Quick RESEARCH about problems and competitors is never redundant.

You can pull some data about users’ behaviours to validate the problems or understand their pain points. The more you understand the problem, the more concerns will come.
Competitive analysis? Why not. Learning from competitors strengthens your understanding of where your product is in the industry and helps you structure future solutions.

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Tip 4: Wander the products to check if any places will be potentially INVOLVED in the given problem.

If not, that’s perfect. Nothing changed in the scope. Otherwise, you can socialize with the PM to adjust the scope and timeline.

Tip 5: SOLUTION is NOT the ultimate goal of a kick-off meeting.

The main achievement should be clear objectives, desired outcomes and a list of action items.
You can give some ideas on how to solve the problems but don’t propose a final one and stick to it. The PM will not approve your solution in the kick-off meeting.

Tip 6: LIST DOWN all the questions you have for the PM.