Many people perceive that generating reams of documentation such as plans and reports are the key to delivering a successful project.. As experienced Project Managers will tell you, this is rarely the case except when it comes to the creation of one piece of project documentation; namely the Project Initiation Document.
Essentially the Project Initiation Document is the key reference document for a project. Think of it as the project “Bible” which will be constantly referred to throughout the project lifecycle when questions of scope and delivery approach are raised.
It is a project document in which is detailed everything related to the project such as:
Project Definition
Business Case which details why the project should be done
Scope of what the Project is delivering
Strategy to deliver the project
Project Team structure and Governance
Communications Plan
Quality Plan
Project Risks, Issues and Assumptions
Project Controls
Project Budget
High Level Project Plan
Project Exceptions criteria
External observers often think that Project Manager’s fears about project scope are overdone, but scope creep is without a doubt one of the major reasons why projects fail. Anyone who has experienced a flood of Project Change Requests throughout a project will attest to that!
However having a detailed and accurate Project Initiation Document tends to stop the majority of such problems for the simple reason that when Business Stakeholders try to change Scope, it is easy to refer them back to the Project Initiation Document. Further since this document will have been formally Approved by the Project Stakeholders and other interested parties, it is hard for anyone to say that they didn’t know what the project was going to be delivering.
It is for this reason that a Project Manager should spend time on what is admittedly not a straightforward nor simple document to write. The problem is that all too often Project Managers are tempted to skim over this document in their desire to get the project started as soon as possible to meet extremely tight deadlines. However by doing this they are simply storing up problems for the future and the very real possibility that they are initiating a project which will have no chance of succeeding.
So to give a project the best chance of successfully delivering, it pays to devote time to getting the Project Initiation Document written correctly and approved by all the Project Stakeholders to ensure the project approach and scope is agreed upfront.
1 comments:
Good post Paul, I completely agree that an effective PID or Project Charter is the foundation of any successful project.
One thing I would stress further is that the process of working through a good charter template is very rewarding and often as (or more) valuable than the document itself.
I remember being in a meeting where it took a whole morning for the stakeholders to work out what was in and out of scope. Sounds like the waste of the best part of the day until you think about the bun-fight we'd have down the track with all those different perceptions of what the project outcomes might have been.
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