Project Management Guide

Copyright 2005 Lindsay Sherwin

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Lindsay Sherwin Tel: 01491 577079 e-mail: FredSherwin@lindsay-sherwin.co.uk   

Project Stages

Stage 3     Plan, Organise and Start-Up

Five Project Stages

When the project scoping report is agreed with the sponsor, the project is now formally "live". For some but not all projects, a Start Up Stage is sensible. If such a stage is needed, then the Project Scoping Report should say so.

There are two types of project where a start up stage should be introduced.

  1. Projects where the project manager needs to build/gain support of others

    • For example - a Bill or a Consensus perhaps.
    • Because of the political nature of such projects and the number of stakeholders involved, on many occasions the project manager will need a start up stage to communicate the project, build support, and generally prepare the ground. The project scoping report should describe this.
       

  2. Complex projects where there are many activities to be organised.

    • For example - many technical projects;  IT systems, spaceship, tunnel.
    • Such projects need to be planned and organised in some detail.

Typically, there are four elements:

  • The Work to be done
    Analysing the project and identifying all the activities and tasks to be carried out, and then drawing-up a time plan or schedule of them. Using this to create a map of the project.
     
  • People
    Start to plan how you will manage and organise the people contributing to the project.
     
  • Facilities & Materials
    At the same time, start to identify any equipment, space, or materials that may need to be purchased or hired and identify that on the planning chart.
     
  • Finance
    Large projects, particularly capital ones, may need cash flow planning calculations.

For most policy and organisational projects the key element is planning the work to be done and drawing up a time schedule. This needs to be done in some depth using planning techniques such as critical path analysis, Gantt charts and milestone plans. Section 5 contains outlines of the key techniques.

How formal this stage needs to be and how much time it takes depends on the particular project. For really complex projects it is best if the Project Manager summarises the main aspects of this in a Project Implementation Plan to be checked with contributors and agreed with the Project Sponsorship before moving onto implementation proper.

Key Points

  1. There is no magic secret to planning - it is simply a matter of investing the time to do it and being persistent in getting people to make estimates. The latter is always difficult and often one is dealing with sophisticated guesses.
     
  2. The main difficulty is often protecting this planning time. The pressures for results mean that often people are "hustled" into action before they are ready.
     
  3. If you don't do the planning at this stage it will never get done. When events start moving, they can gain a momentum of their own and rather than you managing the project, you become managed by it.