Project Defination: Why, What, Who, When and How?

Project Definition - Why, What, Who, When and How?

The project definition phase lays the groundwork for obtaining information about the project and provides a shared understanding about its objectives, sponsorship, costs, benefits, timeframes, resources and mandate. The following template presents the fundamental things that should be clearly agreed at the commencement of a project. They form the basis upon which the project and project stakeholders will be defined and measured.

Management Priority and Strategy
Describes why the project is being initiated, the priority of this project in relation to other projects underway and the strategy to deliver the project. It may include a business case or at the very least a project request form that answers the questions: How does this project align with our strategy and what are the expected benefits to the organization upon completion of the project.

Organization Structure and Roles and Responsibilities
Identifies the project organization's structure and describes the roles and responsibilities of the project sponsor, manager, team members and stakeholders throughout the project life cycle. The roles, responsibilities and deliverables of external vendors, companies and/or individuals also need to be documented. It is important to identify who must sign off on various project management documents in this section.

Project Change Control
This section describes the process for requesting, approving, denying and managing all project changes. A turn around time service level agreement should be established among all stakeholders to analyze the change request, determine its impact to project cost and schedules and obtain a decision to approve or deny the request.

Project Metrics
The project manager and executive stakeholders should define and mutually agree upon the project metrics to be used to measure team member performance and/or organizational project management performance. Criteria for project success should also be defined for reward and recognition of team members for successfully completing the project.

Budget Overview and Cost Control
All cost and budget considerations for the project need to be identified such as labor (internal and external), equipment, software, web-hosting, travel, lodging and meals, training, documentation, maintenance, facilities, and reward and recognition. A spreadsheet of changes and variances to budget must be maintained and the spreadsheet should be closely linked to changes approved via the project change control process.

Key Assumptions
Key assumptions are expected factors that for planning purposes are considered to be true, real or certain. Examples are:

 

Team members will be afforded the appropriate time to complete assigned tasks within established project timelines.

Business unit and IT management will communicate to appropriate management what work is being re-assigned or delayed due to the time allocated for resources assigned to this initiative.Key Constraints
Key constraints are known factors that restrict the available options. Examples are:

There is a budgetary constraint of $XX for training.

The solution must be built on our existing software systems. No off the shelf products will be introduced.External Dependencies
External dependencies are other programs or projects whose timelines may be impacted by this project or other programs or projects whose timelines impact this initiative.

Project Risks
This section identifies the major risks, the probability of occurrence, the impact to the project if they occur and what actions will be taken to mitigate and/or eliminate the risks.

Resource Requirements
Resource requirements should be spelled out very clearly regarding how much time is expected per day/week of each individual assigned to the project.

Communications Plan
This section describes what communication methodology will be used to ensure all project participants and stakeholders are kept informed of project information such as progress, slippage and risks.

Management escalation process
This section describes specific mechanisms used to assist in management control over the project. This section describes the process to escalate issues or problems that cannot be resolved at the project level within the organization. This section also describes the threshold at which point the project sponsor wants a delay escalated to his/her level.

Management Review
This section describes the process for reviewing project status by the project sponsor, manager, team members, executive steering committee, and other project stakeholders as required. This section focuses on the process to ensure management oversight of the project. Oversight will provide early detection and correction of potential or recognized problems that affect project delivery.

It is important that the project definition is fully understood and agreed by all persons concerned. The details should be incorporated into a document, formally signed off by the project sponsor, manager and team members and communicated to all interested parties. Once the project is adequately defined the team will be better positioned to move on to the business requirements, scope definition and project planning phases of the project and hopefully avoid the need for a project review and recovery plan.

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