Kick-Off Meeting

During the kick-off meeting, you begin to develop an understanding of how your internal team views the current Web site and the project to develop a new site. It is important to understand internal perceptions of the scope, vision, goals, users, and content in order to work out any differences within the team and to move everyone into the same plan for your new site.

A very important part of this understanding is to see:

• who your team members think of as the audiences
• what they think are the users' main scenarios
• how well they think the current site meets the audiences' needs

As you Evaluate Your Current Site, Learn About Your Users, and Conduct Task Analysis, you will want to consider any differences between what you find and what your team thinks. If reality is different from what the team thinks, it is critical to make sure the team understands what you learn and adjusts its plans to match the realities.

You can download Questions to Ask at Kick-Off-Meetings (DOC - 157KB) (PDF - 33KB) to help you learn how your internal team perceives the site and its users.

Next steps

Different action items for different people may come out of the kick-off meeting. A few of the action items should definitely be to Evaluate Your Current Site and to Learn More About Your Users.