The first process group in the project management lifecycle is initiating. Initiating allows the project to be authorized. It allows the project manager to act on the project sponsor’s behalf, and it empowers the project manager to lead and manage the project team to complete the project’s scope. While initiating seems like a small and quick process group if it’s not done properly the project can be haunted from the start.
If you’re working in an organization that uses a project management office, a project selection committee, or some other group that controls which projects get selected and chartered you, the project manager, may not have much to do in this process group. It’s a good idea, regardless, to understand the processes and principles that go into initiating a project. While every organization may have a slightly different approach to initiating projects the principles in this section are universal.
Selecting the Project
Is this you? You arrive for work (early of course), and your boss greets you with a new project. You didn’t ask for the project to be initiated. You did participate in creating the vision for the product. You didn’t query any stakeholders – yet. You may have heard some rumblings about a new project, but you were busy with your 8,000 activities, projects, and countless meetings. All you know now is that you’ve got more work to do, another team to manage, and another project that has to be done.
Or are you more like Nancy’s firm? Nancy sees an opportunity within the organization for a project that can make the company more profitable. She creates the vision for the project. She completes some analysis of why the project should be initiated. She pitches the project to the project selection committee. It’s just the way her company does business.
While either model is fine, Nancy’s model has an advantage – she has a deeper understanding of why the project should be selected. She’s invested in the selection of the project and is involved with the selection process. Both scenarios have one thing in common: the project manager doesn’t choose which project gets selected – someone else does. That someone else often becomes the project sponsor.
Real World Note: While Nancy’s company sounds dreamy and ideal I don’t know too many companies where projects are launched that way. Most companies that I work with as a project management trainer and consultant are somewhere between these two scenarios.
Why Projects are Initiated
Projects don’t just happen to give people something to do – usually. Projects are launched for a purpose. Now the purpose may be masked from the project manager and the project team, projects usually, if not always, center on two things: cutting costs or increasing revenue. Think of any project you’ve ever managed; did your project cut costs or increase revenue? I bet it did.
If I drill a little deeper, and if you think back on your projects, you’ll find that projects are typically initiated for one or more of the following reasons:
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- Market demand
- Advances in technology
- Solving a business need
- At the request of a customer
- New laws and regulations (Think Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPPA)
- Social needs in your community
- Desire to be more competitive
- Responses to competition
All projects really come down to doing one of two things for an organization: they’re either increasing revenue or cutting costs. If you want to know how management really looks at your project determine which action your project is providing. Sure, some purists will want to argue that a project is a short-term endeavor to create a unique, product or service. Big whoop – they can quote the PMBOK Guide. Projects, in all their uniqueness, better generate some revenue, cut some costs for the organization, or be gone.
Look at any project that’s failed and I’d wager the project manager didn’t understand the real “why” behind the project. If the project manager doesn’t make the connection between generating revenue or cutting costs they’ll fumble the project every time. All businesses are in business for one primary reason: to make money. Projects must support that goal. Period.
But what about projects in not-for-profit organizations or in the government? In these structures there’s still a link between generating revenue or cutting costs. Project managers in these circumstances, however, must link the project purpose to the mission of the organization. Wasteful projects in a not-for-profit entity basically rob the organization of funds that could go towards doing more good work. Government-based projects should have a link to the accountability of the dollars that are being used in the project.
My point? If you want a project to be chartered and launched the project must support the strategic goals and mission of the organization.
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