Project Initiation

With a good start & good high level planning one can consider half of the project complete

Your project has been selected, and you have been appointed as the Project Manager. You should now use the Project Charter or commercial contract, to get the wheels spinning in motion. At the minimum your Project Charter should:

• Designate you as the Project Manager with the authority to use resources to bring the project to completion -- this is formally done by the project sponsor/main stakeholders.
• Provide a short description of the result, outcome, product or services to be produced by the project.
• Refer to the commercial contract as the basis for initiating the project (if there is such a formal contract).

After having reviewed the Project Charter, do the following:

• Ask the Project Sponsor and main stakeholders to share with you any emails, letters, memos, project feasibility, meeting minutes, requirements or other documents related to the project.
• If a similar kind of project has already been completed, get your hands on all the documentation that was produced for that particular project. Set up a meeting with the project manager of that project to ask for advice.

SOW (Statement of Work)

The next thing that you want to do is start working on your Statement of Work (SOW), a crucial document that you will constantly update and use as a baseline for your project. Depending on the size and complexity of the project, and your knowledge about the subject matter, you will need to organize meetings with the stakeholders in order to refine the SOW and get it approved. A well-thought out SOW generally contains the following sections:

Executive Summary

Provides a short overview on the purpose of the project, its background, its scope and sometimes a high-level project plan. 

Goals & Objectives

Describes the objectives of the project. The majority of project management literature recommends SMART objectives that are:

• Specific: your objectives must be clear so that if someone reads them, he or she can interpret them without ambiguity.
• Measurable: you should be able to measure whether you are meeting the objectives or not.
• Achievable: do not try to attempt more than you can.
• Realistic: do you have the resources to achieve your objective?
• Time-specific: specify when an objective will be attained (date)

Project goals example:

Goal	Team Role
Satisfied customers	Product Manager
Delivery within project constraints	Program Management
Delivery to product specifications	Development
Release after addressing all issues	Testing
Enhanced user performance	User Education
Smooth deployment and ongoing management	Logistics Management

Scope

Details the scope that you identified in the Executive Summary of the SOW. In this section, describe the work that will be done. Also, if required, explain what will not be done – this is especially useful to avoid confusion. Note that the Scope section is one of the most important sections of the SOW. Therefore, be very specific when writing it.

Deliverables

A list of the deliverables to be produced by the project. Describe each deliverable in an unambiguous manner that is understood by the team member responsible for it.

Examples of deliverables are:

• Project plan
• Requirements document
• Design document
• Source code
• Test plan
• Test cases
• Release notes
• User guides

Assumptions, Risks & Constraints

There might be a number of unknown issues while you are planning your project. For such issues you need to make assumptions, which constitute a risk. Typical project risks are associated with timeframes, and availability of resources (funding, project team members, supplies, etc.). Detail the identified risks in your project and include contingency plans for each risk. There might also be some constraints on the delivery of the project, e.g. time or cost constraints which are also part of the project’s assumptions and might be treated as risks.

Stakeholders

Definition

Any person or organization that is actively involved in a project, or whose interests may be positively or negatively affected by execution or completion of the project.

Stakeholders are an integral part of a project. They are the end-users or clients, the people from whom requirements will be drawn, the people who will influence the design and, ultimately, the people who will reap the benefits of your completed project.

Importance

One of the key elements of project stakeholder management is the use of influence (“the ability to affect the actions, beliefs and attitudes of other people”) to ensure that people give their support to our projects. It is extremely important to involve stakeholders in all phases of your project for two reasons:

• Firstly, experience shows that their involvement in the project significantly increases your chances of success by building in a self-correcting feedback loop
• Secondly, involving them in your project builds confidence in your product and will greatly ease its acceptance in your target audience.

Types

There are different types of stakeholders and each type should be handled differently:

• Executive: Executive stakeholders are the guys who pay the bills (Sponsors). Typically they are managers or directors who are involved with commercial objectives for the project. They should restrict themselves to commercial considerations and be actively discouraged from being involved in technical design, their experience and skills are vastly different to that of 'typical' end-users.
• End-User: These are the guys that are going to use your product. No one knows more about what the product is supposed to do when it hits their desks than they do. No one! Including you! You may think you know better but if you don't listen to them you're kidding yourself.
• Expert: Sometimes you need input from experts in other fields. People like graphic designers, support reps, sales or sometime lawyers and accountants.Project Managers must communicate with all Project Stakeholders to discover and manage their expectations before and during project execution, to avoid an otherwise successful project being perceived as a failure.

A list of all the stakeholders identified so far in the project. You may also want to detail roles of each stakeholder in this section. You should also make sure to clarify who will be responsible for the signoff of the different deliverables of the project.

Tip: Get your SOW approved by the stakeholders. Once this is done, you will be ready to start planning.