Identifying and Defining Your Playing Field

10.1.1 Your Own Role

The initiation phase of your project is the most important phase by far. It starts and ends with this phase, so to speak. Whatever you set up in the beginning of your project, it will get back to you one way or another. Project initiation is where you lay the foundation for the success or failure of the project. Of course, there are many other factors that influence the success of your project.

However, knowing that now is when you lay the foundation, why not do it right from the beginning?

So, let’s start with you. Yes, you. You are at the beginning of your project. This also means that project success starts with you. The project leadership pyramid principles help guide you. But still, you start with yourself. What this means at this early stage is that you have to know your role in the new project. What is going to be your responsibility? What do you expect to deliver, or what do other people expect you to deliver? Your role is not limited to being a project manager.

You could work on a project as an expert, a developer, you name it. The role is no

limit to practicing leadership. We will come back to this thought later in this part of the book.

10.1.2 Organizational Project Environment

Once you know your role in the upcoming project you need to gain a good under-standing of your project environment. What authority will you have in your proj-ect? First, is it your project or is it somebody else’s? Are you simply part of a team or will you form and lead it? You need to know your role, what will be expected from you, and in which environment you will act. For example, is your project part of a bigger program or is it embedded in a line organization? Is it a strategic initia-tive? If so, is it an isolated endeavor or part of a whole other project with similar goals? When you answer these questions do not focus solely on your project. Look beyond the boundaries of your project. Maybe other similar projects are running at the same time. Will you compete with them? Or will you complement them?

Maybe your project is redundant. If so, you had better find out early on or you may end up spending your energies and time in vain. Certainly, that would not be a good start on the path to desired project success. When you identify other projects, do you know what level of influence they will have on your project? Perhaps there are obvious dependencies, such as needing to deliver a product to another project so that it achieves its goals. Or maybe another project needs to finish before yours can start.

As obvious as these questions seem, how often have you asked them at the beginning of your past projects? It is likely that you have. But have you asked them systematically and prior to actually kicking off your project? At the beginning of the journey to the base of the project leadership pyramid — project results and project success — you must know where you stand. Otherwise, how do you determine which way to go to begin? Before you pick a target you need to locate your base.

10.1.3 Stakeholders

The good thing is that you are not alone on your journey. There are others in your world. Now it is time to learn more about them. Yes, there is your team and, yes, the team is at the heart of project work. We will look at the team a bit later when you form it. Before you do that, though, you want to identify the project players.

Who will affect the success of your project? Whom do you want to actively involve?

Whom do you want to avoid or keep away from the project?

Once you know more about your project boundaries it is easier to identify those who have an interest in the project one way or the other and who can either directly or indirectly influence your project for better or worse. In other words, you have to identify the stakeholders of your project.

The number of stakeholders you need to identify varies, depending on the size, character, or goals of the project. Unless you know your environment inside and

out, ask others to help you identify the right stakeholders. A logical start is to ask the project sponsor for a list of potential stakeholders. You want them to share their perspectives on the following set of questions:

What are the top issues or risks for the project? Why?

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How is the stakeholder affected by these issues or risks? Why?

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Who else is affected and to what extent? Why?

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What are the impacts of the issues or risks (on the stakeholder/on others)?

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What needs to be done to resolve the situation?

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What benefits does the stakeholder expect from the improved situation?

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What do we need to do to achieve this?

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What does the stakeholder expect from you?

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What can you expect from the stakeholder?

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It is best if you can meet with stakeholders in person and ask them these questions directly. Ask for a personal meeting. Explain who you are and why it is important to meet; explain why you think it is valuable to them. Send them some or all of the questions you want to address, so they have a chance to pre-pare and get the most out of the meeting. Note, though, that getting the answers to your questions may not be the most important thing in this first meeting.

Instead, it is all about personal rapport. Try to get a better understanding of their needs and desires before you tell them about yours. Express a sincere inter-est in their opinions.

Every stakeholder can become important to your project success. Treat them as such. Win their interest in and support for your project. Once you do, you will have a much better idea about how you want to involve them in your project. Stay in contact with them throughout the life cycle of your project. The extent of contact will vary depending on the significance of the respective stakeholder, and it can change during the project.

Identify your stakeholders early on, meet with them ideally prior to your official project kick-off, win their support, and nurture a healthy relationship throughout your project. No doubt this can be very time consuming. I once spent the first 2–3 weeks of a 5-month project meeting with the various stake-holders, trying to find out about their perspectives, their goals, and their con-cerns. It helped me gain a better understanding of the overall project situation, environments, project players, and actual project goals. Following up my per-sonal meetings, I summarized the encounters and the conclusions I had drawn from them. In addition, I shared my overall understanding of the project. I consolidated all feedback received on the initial questions and openly shared it with them. This helped gain their trust and support. When individual stake-holders expressed disagreement with the conclusions I had drawn from the con-solidated feedback summary, it helped me qualify my findings. This then helped me phrase a project charter statement.

10.1.4 Project Charter: Summarizing Your Understanding of the Project

A project charter is a brief description of the initial situation of the project, its high-level vision and project objectives, constraints and assumptions, as well as a list of key stakeholders. The format you choose is irrelevant. Use whatever is appropriate and sufficient for your project needs. It can be done in PowerPoint, a document or table, or another format. But definitely put it in writing. This forces you to clarify your findings. If you have a hard time doing this, chances are you do not under-stand the mission of your project. If others disagree with your wording, that may indicate that there are still numerous different opinions about your project. That is definitely not a good start.

You must know which direction the journey will take you. This is why it is important that you, your project sponsor, and the key stakeholders have the same understanding of the project’s mission. Hence, I recommend that you have the project charter officially approved by the project sponsor and ideally other key stakeholders. This may not be necessary in all circumstances. It definitely depends on the specific project. In a nonbusiness environment you certainly do not need this formality. Still, you do need to have an understanding of your project’s mission.

A couple of years ago when my wife and I and some other parents founded an organization with the goal of building a preschool for kids 1 to 3 years old, we had something like a project charter. It was a document outlining our vision, our objectives for the following months, the people we planned to involve, organiza-tions to contact, and a high-level timeline. The first version of our charter was in the form of an email. We later revised it, creating versions in different formats depending on the target audience; e.g., Word documents for government agen-cies, PowerPoint presentations for the local town council, and a Website for the general public. The first charter was very short. Later documents included more details. This is typical for any project. Keep your initial project charter short and simple. Its main purpose is to ensure and establish transparency. The more information you get about the project and the more you want to share, the more you want to detail and qualify the charter document. But at the beginning, less is definitely more.