Project Initiation - Starting a Successful Project

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Project Initiation: Starting a Successful Project

• Project manager gets assigned.
• Project goals, scope, and deliverables have to be approved.
• Team members get assigned.
• Sign off on the project charter.

Key Components

Responsibilities:

1. Identify project goals.
2. Determine the criteria for project success with stakeholders.

Others :

• 7 Project Failures and What We Can Learn from Them.

Key components :

• Goals: descired outcome of the project - well-defined.
  • Specific (no ambiguity), Measuable (metric & benchmark), Attainable (realistic), Relevant (fits the organization’s strategic plan), Time-bound.
• Scope: boundary.
  • who, what, when, where, why, and how. Stakeholders, Goals, Deliverables, Resources, Budget, Schedule, Flexibility.
  • Avoid Scope creep - changes, growth, and uncontrolled factors that affect a project scope at any point after the project begins.
  • Triple Constraint of quality : Scope, Cost, Time.
• Deliverables : (products or services) produced and presented at the end of a task, event or process.
  • help quantify and realize the impact of the project.
• Success criteria (measure project success) by the quality of the product, the ability to fulfill the needs of your customers, and the need to meet the expectations of your stakeholders.
• Stakeholders : 2x2 grid of interest and influence.
  • What Steps Do You Take To Identify and Prioritize All Stakeholders at the Start of a Project? : List all the stakeholders the project impacts, determine their level of interest and influence, and find ways to involve them.

quadrantChart
    title Power Grid of Stakeholders
    x-axis Low Interest --> High Interest
    y-axis Low Influence --> High Influence
    quadrant-1 Manage closely
    quadrant-2 Meet their needs
    quadrant-3 Monitor
    quadrant-4 Show consideration

• Resources : Budget (for Team, Services, Materials), People, Materials.

OKR

OKRs (Object and Key Results) combine a goal and a metric to determine a measuable outcome.

• Objectives define what needs to be achieved and describe a desired outcome.
  • Aspirational, Aligned with company goals, Action-oriented, Concrete, Significant.
• Key Results define how you will measure the outcome of your objective.
  • Never set in stone.
• OKR at different levels - company level, project level.
• Further reading :
  • Google OKR playbook
  • Planning company goal
  • OKRs and SMART goals: What’s the difference?
  • Understanding the Unique Utility of OKRs vs. SMART Goals
  • How OKR and project management work together
  • OKR TED

Project Team

Project Responsibilities:

Project Roles - RACI : Responsible (who gets the work done), Accountable (who makes sure the work is done), Consulted (who gives input or feedback on work), Informed (who needs to know the outcome).

Project Charter

Create Project Charter, defines the project and outlines the necessary details for the project to reach its goals. (first elements in the life cycle) template

• introduction/project summary
• goals/objectives (SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound)
• deliverables
• scope
• business case/benefits and costs
• project team
• success criteria
• major requirements or key deliverables
• budget
• schedule/timeline or milestones
• constraints and assumptions
• risks
• OKRs
• approvals

Project Charter is a alignment tool to get the project's stakeholders in alignment about the project’s scope and goals.

Cost-benefit Analysis adding up the expected value of a project—the benefits—and comparing them to the dollar costs.

Tools

• Project timeline track an entire project from conception to close.
• Project tracking tracking your project’s budget, deliverables, and other data.
• Gantt chart It organizes tasks by day and is useful for showing the relationships between the many moving parts of a project.
• Event marketing timeline for creating a schedule, tracking events, and visualizing the tasks and milestones involved in a project.