A project is any piece of work designed to deliver a change - such as a business product according to a specific Business Case.
Types of projects vary from developing something new, improving something existing and problem solving to 'fix' a scenario- get back to what it was like before.
Important project variables that need to be considered are: Cost - Qaulity and Time
It is important to distinguish between a project and business as usual (BAU)and we define Key characteristics of a project as:
- Unique
- Brings about change
- Defined goal or outcome
- Has a clear start, middle and end
- Requires planning and coordination
The agents of a project may vary but usually centre around:
- The Sponsor = power. The sponsor is usually in control of the project, funding, approval, overseeing and delegating work .
- The project Manager
- The team members
- The key players (i.e. the stakeholders)
- Specialists (i.e. specialist knowledge)
When putting together a business case it will be helpful if you address the following questions:
- Why is the project needed?
- What other options were considered?
- What are its objectives?
- What are the benefits? Do they outweigh the costs?
- How will success be measured?
- What are the cnstraints (time, quality, cost)?
- How much will it cost and how long will it take?
- What are the risks and can they be managed?
- Who needs to be involved?
- Conclusion?
The Process:
- Conception: The idea has been conceived, justified and initiated.
- Definition: team meeting to discuss and clarify
- Implementation
- Handover and Close
- Review
Putting together your business case:
Develop your own key headers to suit your project, however you might like to use the following as a starting point:
- Sponsor (name) /Contact
- Objectives
- Team members
- Stakeholders
- Timelines
- Scope
- Risks
- Resources
- Deliverables/Milestones
- Constraints
- Benefits
Effective Project Meetings have an agenda, a purpose and have a clear start and end point. The person chairing the meeting should deliver actions and not activities and should ensure everyones contribution is heard and should check against progress.
Setting SMART Objectives:
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Realistic
Time bound
Finally, lets look into some reasons as to how and Why Projects fail?
- poor scheduling
- over ambitous purpose
- lack of clarity
- failure to allow enought ime to plan properly
- not aligned with business needs
- poor leadership
- unclear lines of authority
- insufficient resources
- unclear objectives
- failure to monitor progress
- failure to evaluate results
- failure to close?
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