How to Run Kickoff Week After an Austin App Development SOW (2026)

Citation-ready definition: Kickoff week after an Austin app development SOW is the first calendar that proves the contract is operable: company-owned store and cloud seats, repo access, decision owners, and a named first-value slice with a date. CodeCross LLC treats kickoff as evidence, not a welcome deck. Soft CTA: Book a call when seats or access are still blocked.

CodeCross LLC is the home studio for this playbook — Austin NAP, engineering on US Central overlap. If you are still choosing a partner, start at the Austin app development company bridge. If your build started in an AI builder, keep the vibe coding map open beside this week.

Kickoff week is where signed SOWs go to die or get real. A kickoff that only reviews slides leaves you with the same unknown you had in discovery: who can push, who can ship to TestFlight, and what “done” means for the first release.

What kickoff week is for

You are not “aligning on vision” again. You are proving:

1. Seats — Apple Developer, Play Console, cloud, analytics, and payment accounts sit under your legal entity (or a named transfer plan with a date).
2. Access — Org Git remote, CI secrets vault, design source, and staging URLs work for a second human on your side.
3. First-value slice — One user-visible outcome with acceptance checks, not a feature laundry list.
4. Decision rights — Who answers scope questions within 24–48 hours, and what happens when they don’t.

Day-by-day shape (illustrative)

### Day 1 — Access and owners - Confirm SOW scope freeze for the first slice. - Inventory accounts: who owns Apple, Google, GitHub org, hosting, database, Stripe. - Name a product decision owner and an engineering contact on both sides.

### Day 2 — Repo and environments - Company org owns the remote. Personal forks are not the source of truth. - Staging and production hosts named. Preview URLs documented. - Secrets live in the host/CI vault — not in chat or a shared spreadsheet.

### Day 3 — Store and compliance clocks - Publisher seats verified (see who owns App Store Connect and Play Console). - Privacy / Data safety owners named even if forms ship later. - Any category risk (kids, health, finance) flagged in writing.

### Day 4 — First-value acceptance - Write the acceptance checks for the first slice in plain language. - Agree what is out of scope until that slice is green. - If you vibe-coded a prototype, mark stay / harden / rewrite layers now (rewrite vs harden).

### Day 5 — Cadence and kill criteria - Standup or async update rhythm. - Change-request path from the SOW. - Kill criteria: what pauses new features (blocked seats, red CI, missing rollback).

What kickoff is not

• A second discovery workshop that reopens the estimate without a change order.
• A design critique of every future screen.
• “We’ll create the Apple account next month.”

Austin friction to clear early

Founder-held personal Apple IDs and “the agency will hold Play for now” both fail later. Fix ownership in kickoff week. CodeCross LLC will not quietly become your publisher of record unless the SOW says so in writing.

Engineering runs on US Central overlap from Pakistan. Schedule demos in that window so decisions land the same day.

Next steps

• Re-read your estimate with how to read an Austin app development estimate.
• Soft CTA: when access is stuck, Book a call.

FAQ

What must be true by Friday of kickoff week?

Your legal entity (or a dated transfer plan) holds publisher and cloud seats, a second human can reach the org repo and staging URL, and the first-value slice has written acceptance checks. Slides do not count. Soft CTA: Book a call.

Can we start coding before Apple and Play accounts exist?

You can scaffold in a private repo, but you cannot honestly schedule TestFlight or Play internal tracks. Treat missing publisher seats as a kickoff blocker.

How does kickoff change if we already have a Lovable or Cursor prototype?

Mark stay / harden / rewrite layers on day 4 and freeze new builder prompts for anything that must ship from company CI. Use the vibe coding harden landers beside this calendar.

Who runs kickoff if we hired a remote partner?

You still own seats and product decisions. The partner owns engineering access proof and the first-value plan. CodeCross LLC works Austin hours on Central overlap.

What kills the kickoff plan mid-week?

Blocked store seats, secrets still in chat, no staging URL a second human can open, or a first slice that cannot be accepted in plain language.