Project managers need authority to manage their team members and to get work done through them. Early in your project you will negotiate these specific authorities with someone who is in a position to delegate them. Sometimes you will need to share your team members with other managers. These managers may be involved in the negotiation too. This worksheet is simply a negotiation tool, to help you make sure that all relevant authorities are clear and have been discussed.
Project Variance
analysis & Status Reporting |
Tier 1: Small Projects
Done within an organizational unit with your manager or your boss as the sponsor |
Tier 2: Medium Projects
Cross-functional effort affects multiple departments or done for customers/clients |
Tier 3: Strategic Projects
Organization-wide projects with long term effects |
Text book |
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Course |
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Project team
composition |
Usually team is drawn from within a single department and PM and team may all report to the same boss |
Effort to identify stakeholders across the organization so the project team is not surprised by late arriving requirements which must be added and cost more. |
Elaborate process of surveys and interviews to identify internal and external stakeholders who may be affected by the project so their requirements can be considered. |
Project Business Case |
Often skipped as formal project approval is not needed. |
Organizations with sound project management processes require a business case to justify a project's priority versus other projects in the portfolio. |
The scale of financial and human resources almost always requires detailed justification and demonstration of the strategic impact of the project. |
Project Charter |
1 page Broadbrush plan with achievement network, risk, resources and PM authority |
Project charter addresses the project acceptance criteria, business justification and rough estimates of the resource requirements (human and financial). |
The size of the investment in these strategic projects usually requires extensive documentation of risks, benefits and impacts on other strategic initiatives and the organization as a whole. |
Gather Project Requirements |
Usually limited to a meeting with the boss where we define the project's measure of success (MOS) and decompose that into the major deliverables. |
Stakeholders are surveyed for their requirements. Each project requirements is assessed and either included or explicitly excluded from the project. |
Extensive process of identifying and analyzing requirements gathered from the stakeholders along with an assessment of stakeholders in terms of their interests and their ability to influence the project's success. |
Project Scope Statement |
Short statement of the project result and acceptance criteria. |
More detailed scope statement that covers assumptions, constraints and the major deliverables. |
Full scope baseline development with explorations of alternative means of delivering the project scope. |
Work Breakdown Structure |
Decompose higher level deliverables into the deliverable from each team members assignment |
Decompose high level deliverables and use sections of previous project WBS that are similar |
WBS usually developed in sections with the people responsible for that major deliverable doing the decomposition |
