MSP Project Kickoff calls
By Ian Richardson, Principal Consultant, Fox & Crow
An interesting question ran by my social channels the other day. The basis of the question was how to kick off an MSP project with a client. They were struggling with misfires on their professional services team. MSP projects were having rework, delays, and bad outcomes.
At my old MSP, we had a dialed in MSP project kickoff process we used. I shared it with the poster and wanted to share it with you as well.
Who attends the MSP Project Kickoff call?
The client point of contract (POC), the project manager, and the lead engineer. Attendance by all are mandatory. If you’re able, include the sales representative who sold the project. I understand that sales can be dicey to coordinate around. You can avoid the need by enforcing good notetaking habits in your CRM.
MSP Project Kickoff Call Agenda
Set an hour for this meeting. The meeting can be remote, but if it is remote, you must enforce a Teams/Zoom setting. Encourage all parties to have their cameras on. Regardless of the client, have your team have cameras on for the entire meeting.
- Introductions to all parties
- Background of the Project’s Why (High level, what are the business objectives, etc.)
- Key deliverable confirmation
- Timeline & Milestones
- Impact Assessment Review (When there is downtime, for what systems, for what users, for appx. how long)
- Scheduling of client impacting work
- Scheduling of PM/Client Update calls
- How do we handle rescheduling?
- What to do if something goes wrong?
- Wrap up
Wrapping up MSP Project Kickoff calls
At the end of the call, have all your client impacting work scheduled. Send calendar reminders to the client POC. Invite them to forward those reminders to their team. In the invites, specify the systems affected, duration of impact, and scope of impact.
Schedule out Client update reminders for the project manager. These updates are via tracked email that notifies the PM upon email open. Schedule all routine update calls for larger scale projects. Include appropriate client resources.
Your PM and engineer should schedule the “behind the scenes” work. Do so ASAP to reflect organizational project capacity.
MSPs live and die by having effective project management. Oftentimes, the profit at a MSP derives from the project delivery team. Projects are the highest margin offering the MSP can sell.
Making sure you have your MSP project kickoff calls dialed in. When utilized, they can smooth out the entire experience.
If you’re struggling with your MSP, we can help. Schedule time at https://foxcrowgroup.com/contact to get started. Find value in our whitepapers, located at https://foxcrowgroup.com/resources/whitepapers
