Prepare yourself for fitment call or kickstart meeting for new project allocation

Prepare yourself for fitment call or kickstart meeting for new project allocation

In our professional life, we work on so many projects, all are new for us first time. When we work on a project and the project is completed or for some reason, we move to another project which would be a new project for us, then we do worry about that new beast in our professional career. Don't worry, This article will help you to prepare yourself for a fitment call or kickstart meeting for new project allocation.

We face some problems because we don't want to go outside of our comfort zone, but many times we had to switch the project, our project allocation is not in our hands. It's totally under the control of our managers.
But at last, we need to move on to another project and it's good for our skills and knowledge. While the allocation, many times we face the problem to understand the projects, we don't know what to ask in the project fitment call or in project kickoff or when we are getting the KT (Knowledge Transfer) of the specific projects.

I also faced this problem many times during my career, so I created my checklist using these checklists I prepare myself for project fitment call or project kickstart meeting of a new project, or when I am taking KT from another team for my new allocation.
In this article, we will prepare ourselves for fitment call, kickstart meeting of new project or we will prepare ourselves to take KT. In this, we'll learn all the project-specific questions that you need to ask in fitment call, kickstart meeting, or in KT.
So let's get started and see what are those questions that we need to ask in fitment call, kickstart meeting, or in KT.

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1. What is the project?

You need to ask about the project, many times organizer himself elaborates about the project and its features. But if the organizer didn't start with a briefing about the project, then you need to ask about the project. You can ask and get an understanding of the following topics under the question What is the project?

- Current version

- Past versions

- Past history

- How many users using this project

- Who has started this project?

- How many years old is this project?

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2. Where are the documents of this project?

Documentation is most important of any project, whether this project is big or small, each project has their own documentations. You need to ask about the documentation, you need to ask link and access to those documents. After taking the documentations you need to explore and read the necessary documents carefully.
Documentations enrich your understanding and give you better clarifications. So you need to ask for documents and it's important. Every project should have the following types of documents for developers.

- Complete project hand book (Features and functionalities)

- API Documents

- Public documents and private documents

- Confluence Page

But so many projects don't have all the documents, but they have at least some of them.

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3. What technologies are used to create and maintain the projects?

We are learning how to prepare ourselves for fitment calls or kickstart meetings for new project allocation, in this our The next question would be about the technologies that are being used in this project.
This is very important to work in any project to know about the technologies and tools that are being used in the project. You can narrow down your question like

- What technologies are being used on the Front End side?

- What technologies are being used on the Back End side?

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4. What are the databases used in this project?

Further, we can ask about the databases, We need to know about the databases of the project. There could be one or multiple databases to store the project data. Further, you can ask the following questions related to the database.

- Is database sharded?

- Is there any caching mechanism (Redis) are used?

- Who is managing the database?

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5. What is the architecture of this project?

The next important question in terms of how to prepare ourselves for a fitment call or kickstart meeting for new project allocation is asked about the architecture of this project. The architecture of the project is the base of any project. If you understand the architecture of any project then understanding the project would be your cup of tea.
Maybe they don't have the documentation related to the architecture but they can brief you about the architecture. Architecture is the pillar of the project in which the project stands and has the ability to scale and has the future scope of maintainabilities. In this, you can ask the below question.

- Is it monolithic or microservices or micro frontends?

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6. Any 3rd party tools are being used in the project?

The next question would be to ask about the 3rd party tools. In the projects, there could be 3rd party tools are being used for some requirements and we need to take care of those implementations. So, we should know about the 3rd party tools that are being used if any, because this could be a bottleneck in the future to handle those 3rd party tools without understanding.

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7. What is the process of evolving new features?

Further, you can ask about the process of evolving the new features of this project. The mean of this question is to find out the way how they are developing the features of this project or what process they follow to run the project.
This question should be answered in terms of the following topic.

- Which SDLC model do stakeholders follow to run the project?

- Planning and Requirement Analysis

- Defining Requirements

- Designing the Product Architecture

- Building or Developing the Product

- Testing the Product

- Deployment in the Market and Maintenance

- Agile Methodology

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8. Ask about the team size and team members

The next important question in terms of how to prepare ourselves for a fitment call or kickstart meeting for new project allocation is to ask about the team size and team members. Because after all, you need to work with them in the future, so need to know about the team member, their skills, their contributions to the project.

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9. Who will be our Product Owner / Project manager / Team Lead?

You need to know your product owner, your project manager, and your team leads so that you can reach out with your problems, solutions, thoughts to them. You can simply ask your organizer about your team, your technical lead, and your product owner.

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10. Which Version Control tools are used?

While preparing yourself for fitment call or kickstart meeting for new project allocation you can ask for Version control tool that is used in the project. Version control tool provides the best way to track the changes in the code. It provides the facilities to control the code flow and have the backup, comparing current code and past codes. We can revert changes using Version Control tool. There are so many Version Control tools present in the market.
Top 5 Version Control Software Tools

- Git

- CVS

- SVN

- Mercurial

- Monotone

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11. What Project Management Tool are you using?

Your next question would be what Project Management Tool are you using to manage the project work? Project Management The tool helps us to manage the project and it provides the team collaborations in one place. Here are some project management tools.

- JIRA

- Kissflow Project

- Trello

- Asana

- Zoho Projects

- Wrike

- Monday.com

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12. Designing tools?

Every project has its own user interface. You should know about how they manage the designing part for this project. When you are preparing yourself for fitment call or kickstart meeting for new project allocation you can also ask for how they design the user interface of the project. In the market, there are lots of software, tools, and libraries available to use to design the features for the software. When we talk about designing the features for specific UI of any software I know some designing tools.

- Miro

- Figma

- InVision

- Studio

- Adobe Illustrator

- Adobe XD

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13. What is the communication channel?

This question is more important, because we need to communicate to the team members everyday, and before contributing to the project, we need to do setup for the communication channel. So, we need to know about the communication channel, and if we found something new then we need to explore that channel.
There are so many different types of communication channels that exist:

- Face-to-face conversations

- Emails

- Written letters and memos

- Videoconferencing

- Chats and messaging

- Audio conferencing

- Spreadsheets

- Formal written documents

- Blogs

Here are some famous communication channels.

- Skype

- Google Hangouts

- Gmail

- Microsoft Outlook

- Slack

- Podium Teamchat

- Slack

- Zoom

- Cisco Webex Meet

- Microsoft Teams

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14. How do you do the deployments?

While preparing yourself for fitment call or kickstart meeting for new project allocation you should ask for the process of the code or feature deployments. This is important to know about the deployment of the project. In this, you need to know about the deployment pipelines, DevOps team and who is responsible to deploy the changes. There are several tools for the deployment, most of the project has their own automated deployment pipelines using the following tools.

- Jenkins

- CircleCI

- Deployer

- Sumologic

- Azure DevOps

- CodeShip

- PagerDuty

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15. Does the project send any kind of notification?

Features and functionalities of the project should have been covered in the introduction about the project but is a special case of features. Sometimes we forgot to ask about the notification. We need to know about the notification if it is there in the project. Also, this could be covered under the question "Any 3rd party tools are being used in the project?".
Notification is a complex feature in the project. There could be multiple types of notification used in the project like as below.

- Android App Notification

- iOS App Notification

- Email Notification

- SMS Notification

- WhatsApp Notification

- Viber Notification

- Any other app Notification

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16. Have we implemented any messaging queue?

If this project is big and it has a good userbase, then this question must be asked. You can directly ask "Have we implemented any messaging queue?" to the organizers. Because almost all the product-based projects have implemented messaging queues to handle any uncertainty and guaranteed delivery.
Here are some messaging queues that can be implemented.

- RabbitMQ

- IBM MQ

- Apache Kafka

- Google Cloud Pub/Sub

- Amazon MQ

- KubeMQ

- IBM MQ

- Apache RocketMQ

- Eclipse Mosquitto

Some other messaging queues are MuleSoft Anypoint Platform, Apache Qpid, Azure Scheduler, TIBCO Rendezvous, Azure Queue Storage, IBM Cloud Pak for Integration, Apache ActiveMQ, ZeroMQ, Red Hat AMQ, Ably Realtime, Nastel, Alibaba Message Service, CloudAMQP, HiveMQ, Infrared360, Intel MPI Library, PubSub, TIBCO Enterprise Message Service, etc in the world.

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17. How do we manage the leave calendar?

This question comes if your new project is in a different company or on-site or you are working for another client. Then you can ask a question about calendar management. If your project is in the same company then I think you already know how to manage the leave calendar. Different companies have different tools or portals to manage the leaves of their employees.

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18. How many days before do we need to inform you about our planned leave?

In the preparation for a fitment call or kickstart meeting for new project allocation, you can ask how to manage the planned leave. This question can be covered in the question "How do we manage the leave calendar?", If they didn't cover this part in that question then You can ask a separate question to the organisors. If this looks good to ask then you should ask otherwise you can skip this question. But yes you should know how many days before we need to inform you about your planned leave.

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19. What’s the action plan?

In the next step, you can ask about the action plan for the future of this project. An action plan is a formal and well-managed document that lists what steps must be taken in order to achieve a specific goal or features of the project.
The sole purpose of an action plan is to describe what resources are required to reach a particular goal, formulate a well suited timeline for when specific tasks or features need to be completed and also has the details about what resources are required.
In the project management process, a well-developed action plan is required to run the project and an action plan can serve as a blueprint for the project manager to further break a large project down into smaller basically narrow down the tasks into subtasks, more manageable SMART means Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-based goals.

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20. What does success look like?

The meaning of success varies from person to person. But you can ask what they think about the success. But in terms of the project, you can ask this question to your organizer to see what they are thinking about the success. It could mean a sense of accomplishment and career progression. It could mean being able to do the things you love.

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21. How do you handle uncertainty?

This is not a question related to this meeting, but you can ask formal or informal way about the uncertainty. Sometimes it's required to do a hot fix on the production due to some urgency. So you can ask how they manage this kind of situation. You can ask, How do you handle uncertainty and understand the process of the hotfix.

22. How do you handle the authentication and authorization?

This is a code-level question if the organizer is deep-diving into the codes then or there is a talk related to login or securities, then you can fire this question "How do you handle the authentication and authorization?".
If the project is distributed into different microstructures then this question is more important to know about the authentication and authorization.

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23. How do you define the deliverables and timelines?

While preparing yourself for a fitment call or kickstart meeting for new project allocation you should ask "How do you define the deliverables and timelines?"
This is important when you start contributing to the project then how you assign the user story of your tasks. You need to know how you manage the timelines and delivery of your tasks.

24. Ask about Daily/Weekly syncup call with team

We can ask, if they have any daily/weekly syncup call with team, if yes then please ask to add yourself in that call.

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Conclusion:

After reading this article, it would be eaiser for to you in contributing to fitment calls or kickstart meetings for new project allocation or taking KT. Also, you will get better clarity on the project. If you ask the above questions then you can add your strong impression as well as your values in the team and project as well.
At the time of fitment call or kickstart meeting for new project allocation or taking KT, we don't remember all the questions, so I suggest you note down your suitable questions or you can simply bookmark this URL or save this URL in your place so that you can get all these questions at that time.

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