For some of us, the greatest challenge in a project is just getting started. Sometimes the problem may seem too complex, we may feel vague about who to include as project stakeholders, or we may just be drawing a blank.
Starting out on a good path is essential for any project’s future success, so let’s take a moment to talk about how to properly initiate a project in business analysis. The purpose of this stage is to put the project team together, inform them about the project, and officially launch the project change. But what exactly does that entail? In this article, we’ll break down the essential steps of the project initiation phase so you can start your change initiatives with confidence and clarity.
Step 1: Stakeholder Identification
Stakeholders are internal and external individuals, groups or organizations that are involved in or are directly or indirectly affected by the project. If you’re building a new system, those directly affected by your project could include users and your project team. It could also include those indirectly affected, like suppliers or customers of your organization.
You may already have an idea of the people who should be involved in your change initiative, but it’s important to formally recognize and document them. Clear identification of stakeholders increases project success, ensures that you’re getting a well-rounded idea of the user and business needs, ensures you’re getting varied perspectives and input from different roles and backgrounds (which will also help mitigate change resistance), and increases credibility by involving stakeholders and valuing their input.
You can identify stakeholders by looking at the organizational structure and culture, talking to others within the organization, and looking at the documentation from any past projects that are relevant to your current project. I prefer to do this by visualizing the project steps and asking, ‘what are the internal or external roles that will be affected at each stage?’. You should then document the people (not necessarily names, but roles) that you come up with in a Stakeholder Register. Here at The BA Guide, we like to make things simple for our students, so we’ve created a template of a Stakeholder Register that’s free for download with our Plan The Project course.
Once you’ve identified those key stakeholders, you can have one-on-one conversations with them or conduct a brainstorming session as a group to determine any further stakeholders that you haven’t identified yet. From there, you can validate whether or not they truly are stakeholders who need to participate in this initiative.
Step 2: Create a Project Charter
Once you’ve identified your stakeholders, it’s time to create your project charter. This is an all-encompassing document that acts as a reference for the project. It identifies, defines, and formalizes the project’s purpose, start date and scope, and it authorizes use of the project’s resources. It may have different names depending on the organization and the methodologies used within (waterfall, Agile, etc).
This document is typically sent out to the management team and board of directors to introduce everyone formally to the project and get them on board. It’s also sent to the management team of the users for the new product or system, generally to get their team excited about it and inform them that they’ll likely be contacted to provide their input on the project or get them involved in it.
Until this point in the project, we’ve been a pretty small project team. But with this formalized document, we’re now able to engage additional resources and roles to move this project forward.
Similar to the stakeholder register template that we mentioned above, we’ve created a project charter template for download in our Plan The Project course to help give you a good start when at this stage in your own projects. While organizations may differ in the information they look for in the charter, we’ve created our template with some of the most common fields regardless of whether you’re in an Adaptive or Traditional environment.
Step 3: Arrange and Conduct a Kickoff Meeting
Once you’ve identified your stakeholders and created your project charter, you’re ready to host your kickoff meeting! This is the first meeting that pulls the core project team together. We use this meeting to introduce everyone, acquaint them with the project plan (or the plan we have so far!), and to get everyone excited to be part of this project and to create value for the business through this initiative.
Quick Tips for Kickoff Meetings
- Schedule your meeting for 1 hour. This ensures you have enough time to cover all of the details and answer questions without dragging the meeting on.
- Include all project team members. It’s imperative that all key project team members come to the first meeting, so find a time when everyone is available.
- Send a meeting agenda and the charter with the meeting invite. Encourage everyone to review the agenda and the charter prior to the meeting to foster lively discussion.
In the kickoff meeting, you’ll introduce yourself and review the agenda, provide some attendee introductions or allow attendees to introduce themselves and their role in the organization, discuss the project purpose and goals, and provide an initial project schedule and budget. You’re essentially walking through the project charter. You should also address any risks and assumptions about the project that you’ve identified, then open the meeting up for attendees to ask any questions and provide any initial feedback they have. You can then make revisions to the project and plan based on their initial feedback and input.
Don’t forget to document the action items from your kickoff meeting. By documenting them, you’re ensuring that they get completed and don’t fall by the wayside. In our Plan The Project course, we also have a kickoff meeting template available for free download to help you keep your action items organized and documented.
Start Your Projects on the Right Path
Starting a project can feel exciting and even a bit daunting all at once, especially early on in your business analysis career, but it doesn’t have to be. Follow the steps above and you’ll start your project on strong footing.
And remember the resources available to you. At The BA Guide, we offer numerous free downloadable resources and templates with our courses to make things easier as you embark on change initiatives that will drive value in your organization. Our course Plan The Project offers over 5 hours of engaging educational content that breaks down concepts and techniques into a step-by-step guide that makes it easy to understand and grasp.
Over 40% of projects fail because of a lack of planning, but yours doesn’t have to be one of them. Follow the steps above to keep your project organized and on the path to success!
-Jeremy Aschenbrenner
The BA Guide
