Tips For Getting Your Business Project Underway


by Michael Russell - Date: 2007-01-21 - Word Count: 537 Share This!

You just recently found out that you have been selected by your company to be the Project Officer for an upcoming major project. This project will generate much success for your business if it is executed properly. That is great but where do you even get started? Certainly, one of the most difficult parts about project management is just getting the darn thing underway. Procrastination, difficulty in finding the right organizational structure and obtaining relief from your other job functions can be major obstacles to successful project management. It is very common for one to falter at this initiation stage. With desperate frustration, some organizers will scratch developing a plan of their own and instead move onto a plan that will likely be doomed from the outset. This article will help you avoid this by giving you some tips that should be considered when beginning this new project management venture.

Your first step for successful project management will be to define your project objectives and constraints. This essentially creates a blueprint on how you intend to approach this project and helps to figure what resources will be needed. Your project objectives and constraints must be crystal clear so everyone involved in the project fully understands what is trying to be accomplished. This should also help them understand how the success or failure of the project will be measured. The objectives that you define will include numerous different areas of the project. For example, these may include time objectives, technical objectives and budgetary objectives. Project constraints may include time, technology, personnel, budgetary and cultural. You will then want to develop your project's strategy that will determine how these objectives will be attained.

The next step in project management is to identify all of the project stakeholders. These are the people that will make or break the project or have the most to gain or lose from it. One of top stakeholders in this project is the company or firm that you are working for. Are these project objectives and strategies consistent with the mission and goals of the firm? This project needs to fit appropriately with the other aspects of the firm as well. Without this cohesiveness, the project is not likely to get off the ground due to a lack of support from the project manager's superiors and other stakeholders.

Successful project management will also require you to perform a SWOT analysis. A SWOT analysis will determine the project strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. All projects involve some element of risk so it is essential to evaluate any threats that may potentially appear later on as obstacles. Doing this will help the project team prepare to handle these obstacles and minimize their influence. While evaluating your opportunities will likely reveal your initial project objectives, you also may find that secondary beneficial opportunities exist that the group was unable to pinpoint the first time around.

Getting started with any project is unquestionably one of the most difficult parts of project management. Once the project gets underway, the momentum will help carry you through. Defining your project objectives, the strategy to achieve these objectives, identifying your stakeholders and performing a SWOT analysis will help you build this needed momentum for successful project management.


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