Your mission, should you accept it – you have, if you read the first post and your boss considers it a done deal – is to understand your mission. Sounds simple, right? I will try to make it so.

A project is a unique endeavor with start and end dates and one or more deliverables that provide a new product, service, or application to your production environment. What is it, exactly, that you are supposed to provide? A project sponsor usually establishes that. The sponsor is the person who champions the project – in many cases, they may also fund it. What they say goes, then? It depends. More often than not, that is true. In some cases, if there is a governing board (budgeting committee, project management office, or similar type of committee), then you may have to fulfill the sponsor’s goals within the guidelines of the governing board. Regardless, the intent is to make the sponsor happy by delivering what they want.

Missions, Dreams, and Goals

Your mission is to deliver what the sponsor wants, on time, and within budget if one is established (if you are not sure if there is a budget, you should ask). Delivering a quality product is paramount; delivering a shoddy product on time and within budget pleases no one and may cost the company more than the situation you are trying to improve.

How do you know what your sponsor wants? You ask them! They will tell you what they want to accomplish – in other words, they will give you their requirements. If you are building a house, the architect does not design what they want, they design what the house buyer wants. No different here. In your first conversation(s) with the sponsor, you may keep things at a high level: ranch with full basement, three beds, two baths, backyard large enough for a swimming pool and a swing set. Second conversation gets into specifics: common bathroom with access from the living room, second bathroom off the main bedroom, gas and electric utilities, washer and dryer in the basement, etc. Frankly, these conversations take as long as they take, within reason. A small enough project might cover this in one session; for other projects, it may take several.

Confirming Goals

Is the sponsor the only person indicating what makes a successful project? No. It’s not that easy even if you want it to be. What about the people who have to work with the delivered product? Or those that take your data and feed it into their already-existing systems? They have a say, too, because projects are not built in a vacuum. What you do affects people, processes, and systems downstream, just as you or your project are affected by what happens upstream. After obtaining your sponsor’s requirements, then you talk with other parties, too. If the organization’s culture supports it, maybe you bring everyone into the room at once.

What Is Not In Your Mission

Once you know what everyone wants and how everyone is impacted, then you can start, right? (Hint: you already started; defining your project scope is part of the project.) Not quite. You also want to establish what is not part of your project. You don’t want new needs or wants creeping into the project; those add time and money, and potentially add frustration and disappointed sponsors and governing boards. Best to avoid that by also getting agreement on what your project is not.

Using house building as an example, landscaping is probably not part of the house building experience. Neither is what type of furniture you will buy for your house, or which kids get which rooms. Whether you have a dog or cat, and where you place their food and drink do not apply, either; neither does that shed you plan on putting up behind the house. Those are all considered “out of scope”, and are listed so that everyone is aware they are not part of the project.

Are We Done Yet?

Are we ready to start the work now? Not quite, but you are getting closer. At this point, you have high- to mid-level requirements for the project, and you know what is not included in the project. In other words, you know the project’s scope. Next steps, to be addressed soon, are identifying how the project will run, what concerns and opportunities are known up front, building the schedule, defining a communication strategy, and drilling further into the project requirements. For now, congratulate yourself on defining the project scope.

Takeaways

Your mission, should you accept it, is to run a project. Defining the project’s scope is the appropriate first step. You know what the project should accomplish, and what it will not address. You have confirmed these needs with your sponsor and other individuals or teams who are impacted by your project. And they agree with what you have documented about the scope. Congratulations, you are off to a good start!