Start Every Project with a Detailed Description of the Project
Start Every Project with a Detailed Description of the Project
By Richard Morreale
Too many times I have seen Projects go bad because there wasn’t a common understanding at the beginning of what the Project was supposed to deliver – poor communication. People assume, even on small Projects, that everyone has a common understanding of the deliverable and too late everyone realizes that they don’t.
I suggest that the Detailed Project Definition should be completed before or at the start of the Project. In fact, ideally, this should be the initial definition used to brief the Project Manager as to what the Project is all about. What usually happens, though, is that the Project Manager will have to produce this as the first Deliverable and will get it agreed by whoever is sponsoring the Project. In addition, once this Detailed Project Definition is written and agreed, it should be used as the foundation to everything that follows. As changes are required, this document should be reviewed to see what the impact of the change is to the Project at the highest level.
The Detailed Project Definition will help you to stay focused on what it is that you are supposed to be doing. It will keep you from getting side-tracked and will help, if managed properly, in controlling the problem of ‘scope creep without schedule or budget revision’.
If you are assigned the role as Manager of a Project that does not have a Detailed Project Definition, you should make it your first task. Prepare the document and get it approved by the powers that be before you start work on the Project itself.
The Detailed Project Definition should include items such as the problem to be solved by the Project, the Project’s mission and objectives, the indicative required end date, the scope of the Project, the indicative budget, resource requirements along with roles and responsibilities and estimated Project start and completion date.
Richard is a project manager, professional speaker, author and consultant specializing in Project Management, Leadership, Achievement and Customer Service.
You can book Richard for your next meeting or conference at richard@richardmorreale.com or 336 499 6677. You can check his website here.
these comments will probably sound very picky, but I’m parsing a fundamental difference of perspective: I 100% agree with the sentiment that you are expressing, but we diverge on the description. I think the title “Start Every Project with a Detailed Description of the Project” should be instead “Every project that doesn’t have a detailed understanding of the project will fail”
my pettifogging difference has a point: when we frame an activity with an artefact as its outcome, the perspective becomes the creation of the artefact. and then we become more in danger of confusing our “definition of done” as the completion of the artefact, not the outcome that the artefact captures.
our objective is to have a detailed understanding of every aspect of the project, especially the problem we are trying to solve. how that understanding is instantiated is a secondary (but still important) matter.
I understand that an item called a “Detailed Project Definition” does not have to be a word document. it could equally be a spreadsheet or a set of wiki pages or items in a database or whatever.
but the challenge I think is that the lowest common denominator understanding of a “detailed project definition” would most likely be a word document or its equivalent: a trap for template junkies who want to use it or the subject of anti-documentation agilists who would deny the objective based on the artefact.
I apologise if this attempt to distinguish between a very noble and important goal and its real-world container in any way detracts from your article. However, “the devil is in the details” and more often that not what we say is how we do it.