Project Initiation: Components, Scope, Documentation, Structures, Planning Issues

This report provides an overview of project initiation, including the main components of project life cycle, the importance of defining project scope, the significance of project documentation, the structures that should be in place within a project, and planning issues that may arise during project initiation.

Project Initiation

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASKS ............................................................................................................................................1
1 Main components of project life cycle and their description...................................................1
2 The importance of defining the scope of a project ................................................................2
3 Project documentation and its importance..............................................................................3
4 Identify the structures that should be in place within a project................................................4
5 planning issues ........................................................................................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
The project initiation can be simply defined as starting or initiating a new project. In a
project management task, project initiation is the first phase where aim, scope, purpose and the
objectives of project are decided (Stark, 2015). There are several activities that have to be
carried while starting a project like hiring employees, making goals, arranging meetings,
conducting surveys, etc. The present report is based on project initiation explaining the main
components of project life cycle. Additionally, importance of defining the scope of a project is
explained. The issues that are occurred due to lack of planning as a project is immediately
started are described in this report.
TASKS
1 Main components of project life cycle and their description
There are five components of project life that are listed below:
1. Initiation: In the first phase, the objectives or the need to develop the project is
recognized. The need can be seen as business problem or an opportunity to develop new
one. The accurate response to the need is written as per the business case along with the
recommanded solutions . In order to complete this, a feasible study should be conducted
so that the investigation of each solution options of the objective of project is addressed
and the last solution is identified. Additionally, the different problems of this feasibility
study and justification are also addressed.
2. Planning: Planning is the next phase where the strategies are developed in order to
achieve the solutions of projects so that best profit can be gained. This is also called
scope management. The creation of project plan is performed to outline the several tasks
, activities, their dependencies and time management (Burke, 2013.). The manager invest
and make the budget of project involving the cost estimates of labour, raw materials, and
equipments. This budget is developed by taking care of cost expenditures during the
implementation of project. The three basic components of planning process are
completed when the identification of the work, preparation of schedule and estimation
of cost is done by project team. This is the correct timing when threats related to the
completion of project is identified and dealing with that is performed by using some
methodologies. This process is known as risk management.
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3. & 4. Execution and control: In this phase, the various plans related to the project is put
into movement and by this working of project is performed. The maintenance that is
control and communication is implemented as per their need. The monitoring of
development is done on regular basis and accurate adjustments are done as well as stored
as variances from the original one. In all projects, the timing of manger is consumed in
different steps (Blengini and et. al., 2012). During the execution of projects, the tasks are
carried out by the employees and information regarding the progress is reported by team
meetings regularly. The manager of project uses such information in maintaining the
control over direction of project by examining the comparison of progress report in order
to measure activities of project and taking of correct action as per need.
4. Closure: During this final phase or the ending phase, mangers concentrates on delivering
the final products to their clients, the project documentation is handled to the business,
termination of supplier contracts, release of project resources, and communication is done
with their stakeholders in order to close the project (Adams and Barnd, 2008). The last
step is nothing but conducting lessons and studies that are learned in order to examine
the conclusions like what went good or what are bad consequences. The knowledge of
experiences is transferred again back to the project of organisation that will be proved
aidful in future teams of projects.
2 The importance of defining the scope of a project
The project scope management can be defined as the collection of processes that assure
scope of project has been defined and its mapping is done accurately. This techniques allowed
the project mangers and supervisor to allot the right amount of work that is necessary for
completion of project successfully. It is the primary aim to concern with what should be the part
and what should not be the part of scope of project. The scope is nothing but the information
regarding what the projects delivers or contains. The importance of defining the scope of project
are discussed below:
 Scope of the project is sum or total of all products of projects as well as their
requirements.
 In some cases, the term scope used to understand the meaning of totality of work that is
needed in order to complete a project.
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 The tools that are used to explain the scope of a project is product break down structure
and description of product. The primary tool is Work break down structure (WBS)
that is described and implemented.
 Extreme management of project advocating the use of customer's stories, features lists
and feature cards are used to explain the product-deliverable.
 If the need or requirements are not fully defined and explained then it become a rigid
task to understand the goal of project.
3 Project documentation and its importance
Project documentation can be simply defined as an agreement, trailing and connection
tool that is used by business owner, project advocator, the team members, different stakeholders,
and the mangers of project. This is done in the initial phase of project development.
The importance of project documentation is described below:
 It is one of the important part of project management. It is corroborated by two essentials
functioning of documentation that is : making sure that all the requirements of projects
are fulfilled and establishment of traceability with respect to what is done , from whom it
is done, and the timing of this (Yang and et. al, 2011).
 Hence, the documentation laid the foundation for attribute or quality , traceability and
past experiences for both the specific document and for complete project documentation.
 So, it is very necessary to arrange, improve the readability, and adequate of the
documentation.
 The documentation of project is very necessary so that all the plans that are made should
be permanently kept so that if they can be used when needed by the employees of
managers (Bribián and et. al., 2011).
The different forms of project documentation are following:
1. Business case: This documents kicks off the complete project. In this documentation, it
is written that what are the reasons to develop the project and also it sums up or provide
conclusion of the issues that the project is going to deal. It must be comprehensive and
coaxing in nature that has as much details that justify the investments needed by the
project.
2. The statement of work: If the corporation is working with a third party, then they will
produce this for the company. If they are not present then this work is done by the
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enterprise itself (Greer and Conradi, 2009). It is nothing but the narrative description that
what project is defining or delivering.
3. The project charter: It gives the employees of corporation, an authority to act as an
project manager for the desired project. It is now him or her authorization to complete the
project and this document interchange the idea into an actual program. Without this
document the project does not formally existed.
4. Project management plan: This is a vast document but the combination of different
documents that make the plan for a project. It includes all the things that is needed by an
employee. The management of the project involves different things like management of
tolerances of project, various variations, the approaches related to change control, asses-
ability of quality, etc.
5. Activity log: The activity log keep tracks of all the actions performed by the team. If
something extra is done by any employee then it also adds up in this document of activity
log.
6. Risk Register: This is same as activity log except it keep tracks of all the risks in the
register and contains everything.
7. Status report: This also a collection of documents instead of a single document. This is
very important because it provides the mechanism that is used by corporation to get
information of stakeholders regularly. They are nothing but formal written record of
process (Wiegers, 2007).
8. Budget: It is a document that consists of all the costing that are needed in development of
project. The calculations are mentioned here and managers can easily examine these if
any confusion is created regarding costs of raw materials or anything.
4 Identify the structures that should be in place within a project
This project can keep the structure of project management plan and budgets because
these two structure are very important. The former one keep tracks of all the schemes that are
used while developing the project. The several issues, their remedies and quality of the project is
mentioned here. The project management plan is implemented in order to complete the
requirements of clients and develop the project. The budget notify all the costing that are needed
by several commodities like purchasing raw materials, revenues spend in manufacturing process,
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the transportation charges, costs of packaging, etc. The mangers of project can gather any costing
related information from the documentation of budgets.
5 planning issues
As the project is started immediately, there are certain issues are occurred that are listed
below:
 Poor Outcomes: The result or the poor product is developed as the planning is not done
properly (Stark, 2015).
 Lack of business support: The project may suffers the lack of business support. If it is
not supported by the business then development of product will become impossible.
 Inadequate problem definition and planning: The problems of project are not
discussed properly as the project is started immediately, due to the lack of planning the
strategies are not developed and it is used randomly. This creates a bad result that will
reflected on the project itself.
 poor front end description: The font end or the introduction of the project is poorly
described because of this it is difficult to understand the aims of project (Wiegers,
2007).
CONCLUSION
From the above based report it has been concluded that the project initiation consists of
several phases like initiation, Planning, execution and control and closure. The project
documentation is also discussed where all the relevant information regarding the project is
written so that if needed they can be used by the business or project managers. There are
different forms of documents like business case, statement of work, status report, budgets, risk
register, activity log, etc. that consists of several relevant informations regarding the project
development.
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REFERENCES
Books & journal
Stark, J., 2015. Product lifecycle management. In Product Lifecycle Management (pp. 1-29).
Springer International Publishing.
Wiegers, K., 2007. Practical project initiation: a handbook with tools. Microsoft Press.
Greer, D. and Conradi, R., 2009. Software project initiation and planning-an empirical study.
IET software.3(5). pp.356-368.
Bribián, I.Z. and et. al., 2011. Life cycle assessment of building materials: Comparative analysis
of energy and environmental impacts and evaluation of the eco-efficiency improvement
potential. Building and Environment, 46(5), pp.1133-1140.
Yang, J. and et. al, 2011. Life-cycle analysis on biodiesel production from microalgae: water
footprint and nutrients balance. Bioresource technology, 102(1), pp.159-165.
Blengini, G.A. and et. al., 2012. Life Cycle Assessment guidelines for the sustainable production
and recycling of aggregates: the Sustainable Aggregates Resource Management project
(SARMa). Journal of Cleaner Production, 27, pp.177-181.
Burke, R., 2013. Project management: planning and control techniques. New Jersey, USA.
Adams, J.R. and Barnd, S.E., 2008. Behavioral implications of the project life cycle. Project
Management Handbook, Second Edition.pp.206-230.
Online
Project Management Life Cycle.2017. [Online]. Available
through<http://www.method123.com/project-lifecycle.php>. [Accessed on 6th June 2107].
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