5 Steps to Starting a New Project

Step 1: Get the Vision

The first thing you need to do is to sit down with your Project Sponsor and agree on what needs to be delivered and by when. You need a hard and fast project end date. You need to understand why this end date is important to the business and the impact if you go past it. Only then, will you have a solid stake in the ground, against which you can measure progress.

Step 2: Hire the Best

Great teams deliver great projects. So it's critical that you hire the best people you can afford to bring on board. Try and "borrow" experts from within the business, and "beg" your Sponsor for more cash to recruit the best in the market. Don't fall for lesser skilled people that you can find more easily. It always takes time to find top people, but they will deliver better results in a faster period of time. And they will be easy to manage!

To hire the best, make sure you've clearly specified the roles first. Then advertise the roles widely within and outside the organization. Keep the initial interviews short (30 minutes) and interview as many people as possible. Put less than 5 people through to a second interview and only 2 on your shortlist, before selecting your final candidate.

Step 3: Set the Scope

With a great team and a clear delivery date, the next step is to define what it is that the project has to deliver. This is called the "project scope" and it needs to be documented in depth!

List every project deliverable and describe it in as much detail as possible. You need to work closely with your customer (or the business) with this, because the deliverables need to meet their requirements and deliver the stated business benefits.

Step 4: Determine if it's Feasible

Now you need to know if you can produce the deliverables with the timeframe and resource available. In short, you need to know if the project is "feasible" or not.

To determine this, you need to work out how long each deliverable will take to produce and how much resource is required to produce it. You then need to add up all of the timeframes and all of the resource hours and check that they fit in with your resource budget and project delivery date. If they don't, then you have 3 options: Get more time, find more resource or reduce the scope of the project. It's that simple!

Step 5: Take Control and run with it

If your project passes the feasibility test, then you're ready to go! You need to plan your project and manage it day-to-day