Lesson 3: Project Initiation Activity Group

It is important to have a sponsor who as a high level person within the organization, can gather information from the strategic decisions and also understand the business operations. This person helps in making certain heavy decisions.

The Project manager will stay focused on the project management activities to provide the best possible output from the project. The project manager facilitates activities to get the best out of the team and out of the project.

The team supports the project activities for the best outcome of the project throughout the different activities and phases.

A project manager can be a technical person. However, the project manager should not be chosen for a project based on the technical requirement. For this you need a technical leader or consultant. The main task and responsibility of the project manager is to lead the project and the project team into producing the best project product or result with the resources on hand. Being too technical can be a handicap leading to micro managing, and tunnel vision throughout the project.

The project description is to get all parties to express and convey a common understanding of the project benefits and objectives.

This understanding does not mean that all stakeholders have the same objective but their objectives can be satisfied and understood through the actions needed to run this project.

We stay high level to avoid bringing too many biases and increase the risk of starting on the wrong foot with the project. You do not want to miss on opportunities, and participation of other stakeholders just by restricting the review of the common understanding.

P3.express is a tool that can be adapted to both the predictive methodology and agile methodology. Using P3.express helps visualizing and monitoring the project in a simple way that does not complicate certain elements to the point of losing focus on the main goals of the project.

Most projects will be hybrid. Some will weigh more on the dependency like a construction project where the foundation is better laid before adding walls than the priority like a software development project where mockups and full testing of the mock up can be done in any order for the complete change of the software at the next level.

We are fallible as humans and not all knowledge is donated to us about project management. The Peer Review person is another project manager. If you are lucky this person is within the same organization and can advise, with a fresh set of eyes, about the project management activities and ensure steps are skipped to move forward. This helps in staying independent and also ensures project management knowledge is shared amongst colleagues?

The focus is based on the audience and the message. At the beginning of a project, it is good to communicate to the whole organization and leave the door open so you receive feedback on what else is going on within the organization that is similar or that can help or disturb the project.

The Sponsor is the one who has a higher view of the different projects within the company through the sponsor’s function within the organization and the people they can contact to gather information on the way the organization wants to move forward.

If the organization decides to reduce costs on some innovation projects due to potential lawsuits, the sponsor will know which projects need to be put on hold or canceled until we get more detail about the results of the lawsuits.