When it comes to a project, I have to be honest, I love the thrill of initiating a project.
We are all testing the water. We meet the stakeholders, we are finding out what is needed, we think of a plan and we begin building a team.
I imagine it to be the spring of the project.
Now regardless of how much I might love this part, it is not only sunshine and rainbows, and it does come with its own difficulties.
Because of that, I always try to have a small checklist to support me.
What am I interested in:
Stakeholders
Who wants this project to happen (be it client, or internally a product manager), who is paying for it, who am I discussing with, who has something to gain or sometimes even lose? Basically, what I want to know is who has an interest in this project.
It is not always easy to get a response to all my questions, and sometimes I can barely get one or two answered as soon as I ask. Nevertheless, I will still need an official set of contact persons, while the remaining stakeholders will get clarified with time and attention.
I am interested to build a communication process with the stakeholders, as:
– I need to get a set of needs, to build the scope;
– They need an understanding of progress and status.
Who could be stakeholders: Sponsors, Customers, End-Users, Team, Partners, Third-Parties
If you are interested in reading more about stakeholders, you can check out my post:
Needs
Based on the discussions with the stakeholders, I try to understand and confirm what we want to accomplish, what our goals are (determine objectives).
At the same time, I am interested in also having everyone on the same page regarding the limitations around these objectives: timelines, technical constraints, etc. (determine scope).
Following the set objectives and scope, and together with the team, we begin working on the high-level planning. This means we discuss estimates of time and costs with confidence levels, use prioritisation from the stakeholders and build and MVP plan proposal, calculate costs, discuss risks and mitigation plan, etc.
Ways of Working
Depending on the project needs, I begin to think of the framework to use at project level.
Things to take into consideration:
- Company policies
- Stakeholders: Experience, Work Style
- Scope: how clear it is, expectations
- Project type
- Dependencies and risks
Project Charter
Once I have all the above-mentioned details, I can compile them in a document, so it contains:
- Scope
- Objectives
- Stakeholders
- High-Level Estimates
- Costs
- Milestones
- Deliverables
- Ways of working: methodologies, frameworks
Kick-Off and Plan Sign-Off
Before initiating implementation of project, I set up a project kick-off meeting, with everyone directly involved.
The agenda would be to go through:
- Objectives
- Scope
- Communication Plan
- Risks and Mitigation Plan
- Ways of working
- Plan
Before wrapping up the meeting, I target getting a sign-off from the stakeholders – preferably also a written one.
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