How to :: Lead a good Kick Off

Learn how to a lead a good Kick Off with your client

Kick off is the launch date of the project.

It is an opportunity to

  • meet the entire project team,
  • identify your contacts
  • and explore the customer’s needs

You must leave the meeting with all the business insights necessary to understand what your client does and why they need Toucan Toco.

You meet your client for the first time, you have to share good messages and identify the role of each one:

  • Your role: You are an expert in Dataviz and Digital Project Management
  • Role of your client: Express and share his/her need that you will translate in visualization and stories.

Then you use a proven methodology to deliver on time a qualitative work! First of all, make them sign the Toucan Manifesto (talk to your delivery representative for more info)

Start the meeting by going around the table and ask the participants to introduce themselves and present yourself.

To help you understand the client’s problematic, you can follow these steps:

Context

Ask your client the genesis of the project. This is an opportunity for you to identify the different stakeholders, sponsors and retractors.

Is it a POC (proof of concept), pilot (including short period of test by the end users) or a complete project ? Is there a very important deadline? If so, which kind of deadline is it (COMEX presentation, seminar, etc)?

You must find the strategic objectives of the project, for example :

  • Provide automatically updated data to the general public
  • Enable my employees to make decisions on accurate and reliable data

To find out more about the strategic objectives of the project, ask her/him about the Key Success Factors !

Key Success Factors

The Key Success Factors of a project are 2 or 3 objectives which will make the project a success for your client.

It can vary a lot from a project to another, and be of multiple nature, for example :

Design : Provide my end-user a friction-free mobile experience on smartphone Design : Make sure my users get notification when new data are available on their app Data : Ensure a daily update of the data Strategic : Show to the COMEX our capability to lead a multi-department project etc, …

It will help you to keep the project on the way in case of issue and help your to put a final point at the end of the project.

Users

Then you get into the heart of the matter!

  • Who are the users?

    Directors of regional banking institutions, the top management of the French subsidiary, the group’s field sales representatives

  • What is their action perimeter?

  • Should everyone see the entire app?

Warning

This is important to identify very early the segmentation and different levels of analysis you would explore. This would define the views of your application

📖 Learn more on how to build a view selector this tutorial

Type of usage

On which device would you use most the app ?

If the use would mostly be on smartphone, you have to anticipate for designing your app.

📖 Learn more on how to build a mobile first app with this documentation

Need

Once you know for who you build the app. You have to understand why ?

  • Which action would they take thanks to the app ?

  • At which frequency would they use it ?

  • For what would they use it ?

    To present figures at COMEX meetings? to organize their meeting tour? to pilot their factory’s performance?

Make sure to put yourself in your users’ shoes: how exactly on a daily basis are they going to use it? And more importantly why? To do what / take which kind of actions?

Comparisons

Another key element of your investigation is to identify comparison possibilities.

It allows you to add complexity and depth in your analysis.

Example of comparison:

  • Last year, last month…
  • A benchmark, average of the market, a competitor…
  • A target, an objective…

Time & Period

Define with your client time granularity levels that will structure the app.

Daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly or even real time (in this case, have a look on doc about Live data)

Then do you want to explore only on type of period of each time or several:

  • Current, Year to date, Rolling…

📖 Learn more on how to build a date selector this tutorial

Key performance indicators

Finally, list the different indicators your client want to integrate in the app.

Also do not forget to ask the client for ranges of figures for each KPI. This will help you build fake but understandable data for the client.

For each, write a business definition. If your client has already prepared a data dictionary with the corresponded formula, you can edit it with this functional definition.

Then prioritize them, it will help you write the User Stories.

Draft Users Stories

Now you that you have identified users and you understand their needs, it’s time to draft the different users stories you will design in your app.

The User Story synthesize the question answered by your story, for a specific type of user. You will have one user story per screen - no more !

Don’t hesitate to write multiple scenarios the different type of users will follow.

For example :

As Director France, I want to see my overall result and the division by region as well as the variation compared to last year. As Sales Director for the Eastern Region, I want to see the results of my region and the performance of my team members. As a Retail Operational, I need to know the daily level of stocks of my products per category to anticipate the orders.

This exercise will be useful as well for your presentation of the app to personalize your speech!

Data and Updating

  1. What are their data sources?
  2. At which frequency do they want to update their data?
  3. Identify your data contacts to plan the Data Kick off

Method

Now it’s time to present Toucan

Please read our manifesto

To help you, you can use the Toucan Chart as a support.

In addition, introduce the trello board of the project to your client, and explain how you’re going to feed it following this meeting. Take a card as an example and show to your audience :

  • How you will fill it (with the User Story, the description of your viz, the link to the story in the app, etc)
  • How it will move from a column to another, and why
  • What are their role in this trello board, and when they should validate stories

Agenda

Finish by planning the next meetings: iteration 1, data Kick Off, iteration 2…, final delivery…

At the end of the meeting, send to your client a detailed reporting with all those guidelines, with the link of the trello board to follow the project :)