Project Management
Principles: the Concept
Phase
Agenda
1) Project Manager Role
2) Project Stakeholders
3) Project Concept life-cycle phase
4) Setting your goal and justifying them
5) Writing the project charter
6) Identifying success criteria & measurable
7) Project assumptions, constraints and risks plus roles & responsibilities
8) Identifying stakeholders
9) Appoint the team and kick off the project
1 Project Manager Role
A project manager is the person
responsible for leading a project
from its inception to execution.
This includes planning, execution
and managing the people,
resources and scope of the
project.
1.2 What does mean to be a PM?
Project Manager is:
● not the project owner
● the person responsible for carrying
out the day-to-day management
● Appointed by owner of the project
● Key person between the project
team and the project sponsor and/or
upper management.
1.3 Nine PM knowledge areas
1.4 Three main characteristics of PM
● KNOWLEDGE OF PM
● PERFORMANCE
● PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS
2 Project Stakeholders
“Persons or organizations (e.g customers, sponsors,
performing, organizations, the public) who are
actively involved in the project or whose interests
may be positively or negatively affected by the
performance or completion of the project”
(PMBOK, Ed 4, 2008)
2.1 How to recognize Stakeholders
1) Who is the stakeholders are?
2) What their stack in the project?
3) What is their interests?
4) Identify external and internal stakeholders
2.2 Why it’s important to identify Stakeholders?
1) The right people have input to the planning
2) Identifying project champions who will help your project be promoted and then
implemented enthusiastically
3) Being aware of stakeholders that may cause problems for the project so, that you can
work to bring them on side or work to reduce their possible negative impact.
4) Some stakeholders may harbour their own personal reasons for wanting to see a project
fail and recognising this is an important part of managing all your project’s stakeholders.
2.3 Stakeholders matrix
2.4 Project stakeholder management summary
3. Project Concept life-cycle phase
4 Setting your goals and justifying them
Goals and aims, are the long-term results of
projects. They indicate what a business wants to
achieve through a project
4.2 Evaluating your goal
● Use the SMART analysis
● Evaluate project via Tender
● Make the assessment (Statement of
Work)
● Build a business case to assess the reasons
for why the project should be run
4.3 Build business case
Business case should contain:
1. The background to the proposal
2. Business need
3. Cost benefit analysis
4. Preliminary requirements
5. Analysis of options and recommendation
4.4 Assessing project risk through a feasibility study
1) Examine if goals are feasible to create
2) Assess:
a. Technological feasibility
b. Operational feasibility
c. Legal feasibility
d. Schedule feasibility
e. Financial feasibility
f. Market
4.5 Assess economic feasibility using the CBA
Cost Benefit Analysis should assess Return
on Investment and compare “cost to build”
against “costs saved across life of project
result”
5 Writing the project charter
Project charter is a statement of the
scope, objectives, and participants in a
project.
It provides a preliminary delineation of roles
and responsibilities, outlines the project
objectives, identifies the main stakeholders,
and defines the authority of the project
manager. It serves as a reference of
authority for the future of the project.
5.2 Project charter inputs
● Project Statement of Work
● Business Case
● Agreements
● Assumptions
● Enterprise standards, industry
standards, regulations and norms
● Organizational process, assets and
templates
5.3 Project charter outputs
● Reasons for undertaking the project
● Objectives and constraints of the project
● Directions concerning the solution
● Identities of the main stakeholders
● In-scope and out-of-scope items
● Risks identified early on (A risk
management plan should be part of the
overall project management plan)
● Target project benefits
● High level budget and spending authority
5.4 Project charter benefits
● Defines the project and establishes the
goals
● Helps ensure that project has been
properly assessed
● Helps establish the lines of authority
● Delegates responsibility to the PM to start
using resources in planning
● Will act as a primary tool for verifying
scope and getting deliverables accepted
● Great fool for framing project expectations
6. Identifying success criteria & measurable
The success criteria:
● identifies at the project start-up how the project will be measured to be
successful at the project finish;
● can be considered as project approval requirements;
● is based on measurable project objectives;
● can be evaluated by SMART technique: specific, measurable, achievable,
realistic, time-framed.
● Common success criteria that should be fulfilled: time, budget, scope, quality.
6. Identifying success criteria & measurable
Measurable outcomes can be represented in 2 ways:
1. Discrete: did we achieve the project goal? (yes / no);
2. Continuous: measured on a scale, e.g. in %.
Main rule: the more clearly the project is defined and
described, the easier it will be to measure the project’s
success.
7 Project assumptions, constraints and
risks plus roles & responsibilities
Different companies will include
different topics covered in their Carter
but even right at the start of the project
there are some assumptions, constraints
and risks that can be identified.
7.1 Assumptions
Assumptions is what you believe to be true for
the purpose of planning
The task of identifying high level assumptions
is to list anything that can be considered
reasonable for the purposes of planning, but
that if they don't hold true will have a severe
impact on the project
7.2 Constraints
All those limitations that may impede the project may also be included in the
Charter
Among them:
● Scope
● Schedule
● Budget
● Resources
● Quality
● etc.
7.3 Risks
It is very important to consider risks early on
Both assumptions and constraints are directly
linked to potential project risks.
Identify risks is only one part of managing
them.
7.4 Roles and responsibilities
● Basically anyone who will have authority over the
project running
● Provide matrix or table of these people and their
responsibilities
● Get contact records
● Make sure that PM responsibilities and authority are
clearly delineated
● Get signature from Project Sponsor, manager and
customer
● Allow them to make additional comments if they
wish to flag potential concern
8. Identifying stakeholders
Stakeholder is defined as anyone impacted by
the running of the project and its outcome, or
who have vested interest in the project
outcome.
Identifying stakeholders is the second
initialisation process after building the
Chapter. Also, it is part of Communications
management.
8.2 Main information about stakeholders
It is vital that the Project Manager form,
early in the project life, as it clear as
possible a matrix of
● Who the stakeholders are
● What their interest is
● What their involvement is
● How they may impact the project
● What their influence is.
8.3 Inputs and outputs
Inputs are:
● The Project Chapter
● Procurement documents such as
contracts, suppliers
● Enterprise environmental factors such as
Government regulation, standards,
company culture and structure
● Organisational process assets such a
stakeholder information from previous
projects.
Outputs are: Stakeholder register and
Stakeholder management strategy.
9. Appoint the team and kick off the project
During initiation processes key team
members are identified: Project
Sponsor, Project Manager and client
•Project scope and WBS
•Estimates for technical tasks
•Funding
•Skills and resources that are needed
9. Appoint the team and kick off the project
•Project team is expected to grow after
planning processes are executed.
•Kick-off meeting indicates the end of
Concept stage and involves additional
people to planning process
9. Appoint the team and kick off the project
Points of project kick-off:
•Introduce PM to the team
•Get the team to get familiar with each
other
•Discuss the key points of the project
success
•Define how team will perform
communication
•Establish roles and responsibilities
