The Busy Person's Project Management Book

Chapter 2 - Getting Started

You can think of a project as a journey. Like all journeys, if you want to arrive safely it is sensible to do some planning before you start. The more detailed the planning, the more likely that you will not end up where you don't want to be. It is very important in projects to take some time to do some up-front planning as it is likely that you'll be under pressure to get under way, into the project and to finish it as soon as possible.

The first step in planning your project is consider three related factors that are common to all projects:

• who is involved in the project?
• what is the project's scope or boundaries? and
• what are the objectives for the project

We'll look at these one at a time and then see how they are related.

Who is involved in the project?

Every project will involve more than one person. In a typical small project, you will probably be able to identify the following people:

• The project manager/project leader

  This person is the leader of the team and is generally held accountable for the outputs of the project. While this may sound a little "tough", the project manager would involve his or her team in all aspects of planning the project and should expect assistance from the project sponsor in managing the project;

• The project team members

  These people are the people directly involved in undertaking the project's tasks. They are the key to the project's success as their creativity and hard work will be the major input to the project;

• The project sponsor

  This person will normally be a manager or executive who is organisationally responsible for the project's resourcing, costs and success. The sponsor is another key factor to the project's success as he or she will be expected to support the project manager and team in areas beyond the team's control and authority;

• The project clients

  These people would be the people who are affected by the changes that the project is implementing for the organisation. For some projects, the clients may be the team members but typically there are a number of people who will have changes to their jobs and working relationships who will not be in the team. It is essential that they are involved in the project;

• Support groups

  These groups would be required to provide specialist support to the project team. Given that projects change organisations, typical support groups would be Human Resources, Finance, Accommodation, Marketing and computer and other specialists;

• Other project teams

  In a time of organisation change, there will be many other projects underway. Some of these projects may have an impact on your project. Where there is a clear relationship between your project and other's, the project managers of the related projects should be kept aware of and, in some cases, directly involved in your project.

These people are often called stakeholders or involved groups. They have a "stake" in the success of your project.

It will be normal for these stakeholders to have different views and concerns regarding your project. However, if you involve these people in a positive way and early enough in your project, you should be able to achieve consensus. If you can't, then it is reasonable to expect that your project sponsor can assist you in resolving any conflict.

The best way to keep your stakeholders on side is to invite them to participate in your project planning sessions as discussed in later chapters. By using your stakeholders to help you formulate your project's scope, objectives and other planning issues, you can easily identify where there is agreement and where there is conflict.

The use of team-oriented project planning, development and management has been shown to increase the commitment of team members, to avoid missing key tasks and other factors that are known to your stakeholders and, most importantly, to be more fun. In the dynamic and relatively unstructured project environment, the more minds... the better.

Fig. 4 - Different stakeholders, different views

What is the project's scope?

In many sports, there is a clear boundary. Golfers can hit the ball out-of-bounds, net-ball players have clearly defined court boundaries and the boundary has frustrated many football players.

The boundary of a project is called the scope of the project. If you can't define the scope of your project then you haven't defined your project. One way to think about scope is to consider where you and your team's responsibilities begin and end.

In process work, the boundaries of the job have been carefully defined over many years and are generally detailed in the various job descriptions. For example Mary [in her previous job] knows that it is her responsibility to enter the industry statistics and to produce the summaries. Her friend Bill has the responsibility for taking Mary's summaries and publishing them. Each job has clearly defined boundaries.

At the beginning of projects, the boundaries are generally not so clear or documented.

Sometimes, it helps to think of project scope as a circle or a series of flags in the ground. Inside the circle is your project and the activities that you and your team have to undertake. Outside the circle are your stakeholders and the activities that they have to undertake.

Fig. 5 - Project scope

Another way of thinking about scope is to specify what you are responsible for achieving and what you are not responsible for achieving. While it may sound a bit strange, it is often easier to define what you aren't doing in the project and, as a result, clarify what you must be doing. The following example, should give you an idea as to how this technique works.

Fig. 6 - Scope and objectives

At early stages of your project, you may not be able to determine clearly what is "in" and what is "out". Again, it is very important to work with your project sponsor and stakeholders to resolve any queries or assumptions regarding scope.

What are the objectives of the project?

If scope is where your responsibilities lie, then objectives are what you have to achieve within those responsibilities. Most of us have had some training in the importance of objectives and, in terms of your project, having clear objectives is paramount.

If you don't know the objectives of your project - you don't know anything!

It is typical of projects, especially innovative ones, that the objectives may be fairly broad and high-level at the beginning. For example, in Mary's project the initial objective may be:

To improve the processing of industry statistics

However, the more broad the objectives are, the more likely that the team and the project stakeholders may interpret them differently. So it is important to "fine-tune" the objectives as quickly as possible. Objectives should be as specific and measurable as possible.

One tried and true technique for helping to develop measurable objectives is to "parse" the objective word by word to see if you can state the word in a more accurate and precise manner.

This technique should ensure that you have thought through your objectives before you start.

A common mistake when stating objectives is to state the "results" as objectives. For example "To reduce costs" or "To improve service" are not objectives but results or outcomes from doing something. Objectives should state what you have to do to achieve the outcome of " improved service", for example. Another mistake is to state constraints as objectives. For example, "To implement a new team-based processing cycle by July 1" or "To deliver the project using only three people" are statements of constraints. It's not that you can ignore any constraints such as timing, costs or resources that apply to your project, you should list them as constraints.

How are these things related?

Scope, objectives and stakeholders are inter-related. If you change the scope of your project, then you will change your objectives and the involved groups or stakeholders. If your project's scope expands, then you will have additional objectives and some previous stakeholders will become part of the team and there will be new stakeholders.

Fig. 7 - New scope then new objectives and new stakeholders

Change is inevitable in most projects. What is important is that as long as you have a clear and documented set of objectives and scope, then you can determine the impact of the change and re-plan your project. The key point here is to "not panic". As long as you can manage the changes to your project's scope and objectives, you'll be able to manage the project. Every time the project changes you must stop to re-plan with your team and project stakeholders.

As we'll discuss in later chapters, there are other parts of the project that will change with changes in scope and objectives.

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