If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail. – Author unknown
Today’s business climate requires new and creative new business initiatives to capture market attention and to stay ahead of the competition. Senior managers often believe that these new business strategies are so important to corporate survival that they frequently rush to implement the strategies without a thorough and adequate investigation and planning process. Seasoned project managers describe this rush as: “Ready, Fire, Aim.
That’s right, important new business and strategic initiatives are being rushed in such a way that the corporate managers are putting the success of the endeavor at risk. Not only are risking the success of the project, but in some cases the entire enterprise, not to mention what damage they may be doing to their own reputation.
This rush to implementation by-passes most if not all of the planning process that project managers use to develop and plan the implementation or rollout.
Structured project management methodologies typically begin with a project Initiation Phase that consists of documenting and analyzing the underlying business strategies in the form of a Feasibility Analysis or Project Proposal. From there a Project Charter should be written to provide more information about the project, such as the scope, objectives, deliverables, assumptions, high level risk analysis, a brief description of the decision-making procedures, budget and scheduling requirements, and approvals. The most important element of the Project Charter is the assignment of the project manager who will be responsible to manage the project through completion.
When the project’s driving forces have been detailed and documented, the project manager can begin to plan the project.
Here’s another quote that illustrates the point: “There’s never enough time to do it right first time, but there’s always enough time to go back and do it again.”