You want to achieve Just in Time (JIT) to align all the parts (swim lanes) below to be done, executed, ready at the same time. The closer you can get them to align, the better.

• SOW, Change Requests (CR), Legal – paperwork done, executed to allow you to start and recognize revenue on services
• Bench, Recruiting, Interviews, Team – have the team ready, interviewed, accepted
• Onboarding, Virtual Machines, VPN, Infrastructure, Office Space – have onboarding procedures done e.g. drug testing, background, have infra, laptops virtual machines, login accounts, IDs, office space, etc. in place
• Knowledge Transfer – team needs to start learning about the project, consuming materials from the customer about the project, or learning domain, etc. ahead of the project start

This is a sticky note that has been my reference for a long time. Red X’s are for reference purposes, your goal is to line up the X’s as close to each other as possible i.e. Just in Time (borrowed from a manufacturing concept) so everything and everyone is ready to start. That way you don’t have the team lined up sitting idle, waiting for SOWs to be executed or waiting for an official customer onboarding to be done before they can start the engagement. If you’re missing any components, try to move some things up, for example, start the knowledge transfer or customer onboarding, getting VPNs, IDs, environments,  hardware, etc. setup while your team is waiting for an official start date and an executed SOW.