PMcrunch

Here’s a look at just one aspect of the project plan - defining the purpose or objective of the project. How this is defined goes a long way to steering the project direction!

Define the Purpose or Objective of the Project

The project team and stakeholders, absolutely need to be crystal clear and in alignment as to what the project is about. The simple statement of purpose for a project is one of the very first things done in project planning. However, if the person or team that defines that statement is not challenged to the point of really producing a good one, then they may simply fall back into a mode of filling in the blank, or checking the box on a template.

Raising the Bar

It is the job of a professional project manager, or PMO if there is one, to set the standard on what is an adequate definition of purpose. I am currently working with a group that is having a lot of trouble with this. I can tell you first hand that it is quite challenging getting people to understand the importance of this.

One challenge is that many projects are a component of a much larger project. For example, in the defense industry, there are many large blanket projects for a particular system. However, there are so many different aspects to that, and they require such varied in depth expertise, that many of the components are farmed out and assigned to the appropriate organizations or contractors. Thus, each one of these sub organizations has a project, and that project may have the same name as the overall blanket project.

An example

An example would be a helicopter communications system. In such a system there are issues related to hardware, software, communications, design, testing and more. These different aspects are often handled by separate and distinct organizations, making the coordination across the project very challenging indeed. What is critical is that each of these sub organizations clearly defines THEIR piece as a project. It actually should be defined for them, but then they need to define it in their own plan.

It is very important to understand project context and equally important to understand the scope of your project within that context. If you can get your hands around the scope - and if you get others to get their hands around the scope of their project - within the context of the larger project, you have helped to bring things along way for ultimate project success.

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John Reiling, PMP

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