Determining your basic scope for planning purposes

Often a project's inception will occur long before the project is actually implemented. This is typically due to funding timeline. This is the point in time to nail down the basic SOW (Scope of Work) for key cost components. Some key questions to ask when planning the project:

1. What is the expected outcome of this project?
   
2. From management’s perspective what is the priority (sacrificed above all else)? Cost, Quality or Timing? If it is timing, then be sure to have a definitive target date from management for completing this activity. Then ask yourself, “If the project gets behind schedule, what resources would be needed to make up the time?” Additional manpower is the solution that needs to be accounted for during budgeting. Other options such as scope reduction don’t have the same cost related requirements.
   
3. Who are the key stakeholders in this project? Once you know that, pose the above questions to them as well.
   
4. What resources will be available for the project? Are they time-constrained with other simultaneous activities, or are they 100% allocated to this project? Do the resources have annual planning schedules that overlap? If your project requires an architect and an electrician, but the architect isn’t available to you until June, then the project isn’t starting until June.
   

These answers should provide you enough of a framework to submit basic budgetary, manpower and schedule requirements for a typical companies annual plan.

Glossary & Abbreviations

This will be a running list of standard (and not so standard) project management terms and abbreviations.

Definitions
Key Stakeholders: Those who have a voice in your projects scope, direction and requirements. Typically includes management and customers (those in receipt of your finished product).

Scope: The definitive terms of your finished project. Example: deploying the application to North America was within scope of the project. Deploying it to our European offices was not.


Abbreviations
PM: Project Manager
SOW: Scope of Work

When does a task become a project?

A project is a temporary endeavor, having a defined beginning and end (usually constrained by date, but can be by funding or deliverables, undertaken to meet particular goals and objective, usually to bring about beneficial change or added value (Wikipedia 2009).

If you undertake an activity with a definable start and end, a finite budget and some sort of deliverable/goal, then you are running a project.

Operational activities, which typically are ongoing in nature, are not projects. They may have a set budget, and goals/objectives, but due to their lack of date constraint can’t be considered a project. As a result project management methods do not always map to the oversight of operational responsibilities. This is a common misunderstanding and at times needs to be explained to management when they ask you to project manage these types of activities.

At times there may be projects to implement, document or improve an operational activity. Once the project portion is complete, handoff is key to ensure that your efforts do not get pulled into operational duties. I’ll talk about handoff & closing out a project in a later blog.

Once you know you have been assigned to manage a project the next step is to begin planning. Depending on your company that may be actual implementation planning or it may merely be corporate “annual plan” type planning which is less detailed, but still important to carve out time, money and resources based on some basic scope questions.

Next we will look at how best to do this first step in planning a project.

Welcome Readers

If you are stumbling across this blog, I hope you find it interesting. As an IT project manager I wanted a venue for sharing some of my thoughts on best practices in project management. Sometimes it will be IT specific, but hopefully, it will be applicable to other areas as well.

If you are a project manager, or have a mind for the business world I welcome your feedback/thoughts.