A project is an activity that has a very clear beginning and end. The project is about the fact that at the end of it a unique result must be achieved, a unique product or service must be created. Regardless of what result is achieved during the implementation of the project, the same initiation steps are most often applied to everyone.
What is there worth to know about projects?
Very often, projects are changes in products or the implementation of certain additional requirements that do not change the essence of the product or service, but configure or add additional functions, in this case a unique result is achieved, for this reason this activity can also be classified as a project. However, not all organizations will have only the criteria of beginning and end and uniqueness, often organizations have additional criteria to determine whether the planned change is a project, a program, or maybe just a small change. Those criteria may include:
impact to the organization, meaning is there an impact to critical company processes
investment size
amount of impacted applications, processes, stakeholders, areas
size of the team, that will have to work on the change
amount of stakeholders
amount of vendors if there are any
... and so on
What are the key steps for project implementation?
Project management in PMBOK is very widely described from all sides of project management cycles. Most of the steps depending on the maturity of the organization are also applied in practice. Some of the main steps to initiate projects are:
in particular, many organizations are asked to think about new projects already a year ahead, when the organization plans its annual budget, goals, revenue growth, additional requirements from the government to carry out activities, etc.
very often, if the project was not included in the annual plan of the organization, it can hardly be initiated due to the lack of various resources, such as: people, money, etc.
however, if the project is planned in the annual plan of the organization, then in this case all projects at the time of their initiation must have artifacts:
the business plan of the project, i.e. what benefits the project plans to achieve after the implementation of the project
project scope: what changes are included and which will be untouchable
business requirements: as - is and to to - be process after project is implemented
list of stakeholders
list of decision makers
and finally, during the initiation of the project, a meeting is required, where all stakeholders, together with the project team, are introduced to the "rules of the game", i.e. how, when and to whom the progress of the project will be presented, what is the project team, what are the initial steps. Of course, it should be kept in mind that during the project initiation meeting it is mandatory to present what the project is being initiated about and what benefits are desired to be achieved.