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A project is
an organization with an end date. It has all the dimensions of any ongoing
business: strategy, products, processes, structure, information, technology,
people, infrastructure, and culture. An organization exists to provide
products and services to its customers. Likewise, a project is created
to develop and/or improve some aspect of its sponsoring organization (business
processes, application systems, etc). The result of the project is its
product or service. As project manager, your role is like that of the
CEO. Your sponsor is the chairman of the board. And your team leads are
your department heads.
The challenge during the initial phase of a project is to put all the
organizational dimensions in place quickly. If you don’t do it at
the beginning of the project, you’ll pay for it downstream.
Below, we define what we mean by each dimension of a project, and suggest
who should be involved in establishing each.
Project Strategy: Strategy should answer the question “Why
are we doing this and what’s our overall approach?” A project’s
strategy must be aligned with the organization’s strategy. The project
is at risk if stakeholders can’t see what benefit the project brings
to the organization. Project strategy is best formulated by the sponsor,
key stakeholders, and the project manager. Working as a team, they can
develop the “business case” for the project and consider alternate
approaches for undertaking the endeavor.
Project Products: The project is in place to create or change something
about the sponsoring organization. This could be a new subsidiary, a new
business process, or a new application system. It could also be enhancements
to existing processes or applications. The end result of the project is
the “product” it delivers to the sponsoring organization. The
project’s result must be clearly defined at the strategic level (or
conceptual level) during project initiation, and it becomes much clearer
as requirements are defined, the design is developed, and so on. Again,
the project sponsor, key stakeholders, and the project manager work as
a team to develop the conceptual definition of the project’s end
results.
[continued
page two]
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