A Project Quick Start Guide

The Steps

• Meet the Project Sponsor• Agree to the Project Scope• Consolidate the Project Roadmap• Establish Methodology and Governance• Confirm the Project Team Organogram• Confirm the Project Team Role and Responsibility• Team Status Feedback• The Project Stakeholders• The Project Workbook• The Project Folders• The Initial Kick-off

Meet the Project Sponsor

The Project Sponsor has overall accountability for the project and is primarily concerned with ensuring that the project delivers the agreed business benefits and will be the project manager’s champion for all projects within the company.

When you start at a company setup a time to meet with the project sponsor and get an understanding of what his vision is for project management and any concerns that are currently being experienced

Give him time to get to know you in the meeting and how you would like to approach the projects that you have been brought in to manage

Have a presentation ready that shows who you are and what you have done during your career

Agree to the project scope

The Project Scope Statement provides the information to proceed to the business case that will be approved by the business stakeholders

The purpose of the Project Scope Statement is to provide a baseline understanding of the scope of a project and includes:•Purpose and Justification of the Project•Scope Description•High Level Project Requirements•Project Boundaries•Project Strategy•Project Deliverables•Acceptance Criteria•Project Constraints•Project Assumptions•Cost Estimates•Cost Benefit Analysis

Consolidate the Project Roadmap

Project Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4

Name

Name

Name

It is important to clearly establish when you start what the project roadmap reflects. This can be used where there are multiple projects that need to be managed or for an individual project that can be broken down into phases

What needs to be established here is:

What is the current RAG status of the project/s?What is timeline and is there slippage?What is the assigned budget?What is the perceived complexity?

Setup the project roadmap to clearly show the full picture that can be used in future meetings with the team and stakeholders

Establish Methodology and Governance

Methodology Governance

Every company has their own form of methodology and governance to manage their projects. It is important in the beginning to establish exactly how this works in their project environment. They may be a PMO in place to assist with this but if not this would be a great place to confirm the project framework and make recommendations where required.

What project methodology is used for project management?• Prince2• PMI• Project SaaS

What project methodology is used for software development?• Waterfall• Agile• A Blended Approach

How is the governance managed for documentation and templates that are used during the project life cycle

• Is there a folder structure?

• Is there a shared location?

• Where can the current templates be found?

• What changes would the company like to

bring in for all project governance?

Confirm the Project Team Organogram

Project

Workflow

Lead

Workflow

Lead

Workflow

Lead

Whether as a project manager you are taking on a project that is in progress or it is a new project, outlining the project organogram will help to have an understanding of what the internal resources and external resources into the project are

This will help with beginning to outline the project teams roles and responsibilities

It will help to take the project roadmap and subdivide each project into the workflow and establish who the current team lead is in that role

If no resource has been allocated it will provide you with a heads up that this role will need to be sourced

The project organogram is a great tool to filter in how this fits into the overall company structure and matrix whether it is project focused or business led

Confirm the Project Team Role and Responsibilities

Setup a meeting with each member of the team to allow them to define their current understanding of their role and responsibility

A useful guide is to begin to setup the company’s role and responsibility matrix and how this is measured against deliverables and KPI’s (e.g. time to meet task; commitment to team)

Once you have agreed on the role and responsibility setup a document with the team member and agree that this is the starting point and the information can be updated as the project moves ahead to ensure that there is a buy in for the project.

If there are no roles and responsibilities defined there is generic information available on project management sites but the ultimate objective is to agree and confirm roles and responsibilities that will manage the end to end project life cycle

Team Status Feedback

As a new project manager it is very important that you have a current status on what work has been currently performed on projects that are underway as well as any risks or issues being encountered.

If this is a new project the team members can provide valuable feedback on lessons learnt and what they believe will improve the rollout and implementation of all projects.

Providing the right mind set for status reporting will help future status meetings to be attended and the correct information provided across all of the project phases.

Setting up a status dashboard presentation will help the team members to provide the correct information in a user friendly way.

The Project Stakeholders

By successfully managing your stakeholders you ensure that you will be supported throughout your project and your influence will be recognised as key decisions need to be made and implemented throughout the project life cycle .

Managing your stakeholders effectively is vital for the success of your project. When you start a project go and where possible meet the stakeholders.

Get to know them, let them know who you are as a project manager. Find out their concerns, their expectations and a good cup of coffee always helps.

The project stakeholder matrix is a great place to start to define what each stakeholders impact is into the project. Setup a coffee meeting with each stakeholder and carefully understand what their expectations are

The Project Workbook

During the initial stages of starting a project setting up the project workbook will allow you as a project manager to have full control over the key elements that need to be noted and controlled during the project life cycle

It is also a great way for every member of the team to have instant information to the project and provide a guide on what the current status is.

Although the trend today is to move more and more to project applications that are cloud based this is still a great way to manage and control a project

Today more and more companies and project management are looking to cloud based solutions to manage the project which provides full information in real time across the whole team. .

The Project Folders

As you begin to collect information an important step is to begin to establish the projects folders that will store and save all documentation that is raised by the project manager and all the members of the team

The project folders should align to the agreed governance and methodology and store the information in line with the agreed governance

To provide easy access to all documentation a central shared point should be setup for the full project team

A great help is to setup up the project template in line with the project folder structure to ensure consistency across all documentation

The Initial Kick Off

Once you have all the project start up information in place it will then be time to have the initial kick off meeting with the team both internal and external, the project stakeholders and the project sponsor. It would also be a good idea to include any business teams that are part of the process

This meeting is not a project kick off meeting it is where you as the project manager will lay the groundwork of how the project or projects are to be managed, controlled and executed within the company

Setup some way that each team member has a few minutes to introduce themselves and what their role is

Refreshments are also a good idea to break the ice and great coffee always is a hit.