Why the Project Sponsor Must Attend the Kickoff Meeting

If your project sponsor doesn’t want to star in the project kickoff meeting for whatever reason, your project will be in trouble from the beginning. Bob McGannon and I explain what the sponsor’s role is in a kickoff meeting and we highlight all the ways their absence creates problems. Don’t worry. We provide some tips for convincing the sponsor to show up.

Coming Up

Many different audiences make up a project team, from the project sponsor and customer to numerous stakeholders, to various teams that take on the work in the work breakdown structure. These audiences often need different information, prefer different communication methods and frequencies, and come with unique perspectives and idiosyncrasies. I’m a big believer in effective communication, so I’m looking forward to this conversation with Tatiana Kolovou and Brenda Bailey-Hughes. I hope you’ll join us on Friday, April 10, 2026 at 11am MT/1pm ET. Click here to join!

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 103,000 subscribers. This newsletter is 100% written by a human (no aliens or AIs involved). If you like this article, you can subscribe to receive notifications when a new article posts.

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