Michelle Symonds hat auf dem ProjectSmart-Blog eine schöne Sammlung von Fragen veröffentlicht, über die ein Projektmanager beim Start des Projekts Klarheit haben sollte. Natürlich gibt es mehr Fragen – je nach Projekt, aber als Anfang ist das eine gute Basis:
- What are the business goals the project is aiming to achieve?
- What business benefits will these goals deliver if achieved?
- What will be the consequences to the business (financial, reputation etc) if the project does not go ahead or fails to deliver the objectives?
- Are there any easy-to-implement alternatives to this project? Sometimes other solutions are available that do not require the cost implications of a full-blown project.
- Are there any disadvantages to implementing this project? Staff redundancies might be an obvious one, but there might be some that are less obvious.
- Who is the main stakeholder, with ultimate responsibility for driving the project forward? It is important that someone senior takes ownership of a project – that person should never be the project manager.
- Who is responsible for ensuring appropriate resources (time, people and money) are allocated to the project? This should be someone with the authority to allocate whatever resources are required.
- Who will be responsible for deciding whether the project goes ahead or not after the initial investigations? This will often be a group of people, sometimes with conflicting aims.
- Is the new project dependent on the successful delivery of a current project? If so, a full report on the status of the project already underway should be obtained before committing to the new project.
- What are the success criteria that will indicate the objectives have been met and the benefits delivered?
- Will new equipment/products be required to facilitate project delivery for example is new software needed?
- Will there be any necessary staff changes (redundancies or new hires)?
- Will existing staff require re-training, for example, to learn new business processes?
- Which individuals, teams or departments will be involved in the project?
- Who will be responsible for documenting the business requirements in detail?
- Who will determine interim and final deadlines? Projects where the marketing department, for example, decide on a deadline for an IT project have a far less chance of success than when informed estimates are made about the resources required.
- How much contingency will be available in the budget?
- Who will be responsible for making the decisions to include or exclude requested changes once the project is underway?
- Will the project deliverables need to be tested and, if so, by whom?
- Who will provide the final approval of the project deliverable?
