Transcript:

So welcome to our Impactful Projects and Planning microtraining series. I'm Jami Yazdani. In today's session, we're going to talk about how to initiate your projects and set your team and stakeholders up for success.

So, how do your organization's projects start? What happens when your leadership, a staff member, a team member, or another stakeholder brings forward an idea to create something new, to address a need or challenge, or to further a mission or priority? What actually happens when we have an idea that we want to pursue, when our idea becomes a project?

So often we jump straight into planning. We go from having some consensus around pursuing an idea to asking, "Well, what exactly are we going to build? What are we going to create? What should it look like? What are the first steps we want to take?" In many mission-driven organizations, we sail straight from an idea into detailed planning, skipping the project initiation activities that could really help us make our project more successful and impactful.

So there are a couple of things we should be doing during project initiation: getting some type of project approval, setting project parameters, and holding a project kickoff meeting. So let's talk about each of these and why they matter.

I always recommend having some type of project approval process. Now, in many mission-driven organizations or with certain projects, approvals are pretty informal. An idea is raised to the board or staff meeting or during a discussion; leadership or team members think it makes sense, and some lucky soul or team is asked to pursue it. A project is born. Simple is usually best, and a formal bureaucratic process doesn't need to hinder collaboration or progress. But I would suggest taking a step back before an informal approval and considering a few things.

First, consider whether the project aligns with your organization's strategic priorities. Does it really support our mission or objectives? Second, consider whether the project is actually feasible given your existing staff and resources. If not, and we need to build capacity in some way or get funding or resources, is that feasible? And if we already had that capacity or those resources, is this how they'd be best put to use? And third, we want to consider the short-term and long-term impacts of the project and its outcomes on your team, your organization, and your community. So who will the project itself impact? Who will be impacted by what the project is going to create, and are we able to sustain the outcomes that we build?

These questions can still be considered informally over a conversation or in a team meeting, but we do want to make sure we're considering alignment, feasibility, and impact when deciding to pursue a project. Of course, we can also approach approval on these questions more formally with our team. We can use a project approval form or process, or we can conduct project feasibility or sustainability assessments.

But it's been my experience in mission-driven organizations that we often leave the more formal approvals to those who control the money and resources. Because our projects are often only feasible with grant or special funding, we adopt our funder's approval process or grant application process as our project approval process. If we get the money or resources, the project's approved. And because we often have to provide detailed plans to these donors, foundations, or boards, or submit lengthy applications to get this funding or support, we jump straight from idea to planning.

But I think when we put too much reliance on funding approvals, we often miss those other important considerations around alignment and impact. So I recommend having some type of approval process that considers alignment, feasibility, and impact as a precursor to pursuing funding, even if it's a very informal process.

The next activity we should be doing during project initiation is setting project parameters. Again, often we are asked to do this to secure funding or resources, and sometimes we are handed a project with parameters already set for us. But it's something that we want to define very clearly and confirm during initiation. So when you think of project parameters, a few things may come to mind, like the budget. There's often a total funding amount defined when a project is initiated, or a determination is made of available resources that can be used for the project.

Another parameter may be the final deadline or dates we expect our outcomes to be completed or delivered. And we may even have parameters or criteria for the quality of our outcomes or the project itself. Maybe our outcomes need to meet certain standards, include specific elements, or adhere to rules or regulations. These types of parameters are often set during initiation and are really important to understand before moving into planning.

But there are other parameters we can consider as well. I often talk in these trainings about my five key elements of impactful project management: scope, stakeholders, outcomes or deliverables, schedule, and communications. I've found that these five elements can greatly impact your project's success, especially for mission-driven organizations. We use them throughout a project to plan, execute, and monitor progress.

Beyond the common parameters like budgets, deadlines, and quality, I also recommend focusing on scope and stakeholders during project initiation. If we want engagement, if we want to set our teams and stakeholders up for success, we need to spend time on scope and stakeholders. So I recommend coming out of initiation with a written scope statement. I've talked about scope in another training, so I'm not going to belabor it here, but we do want to go into planning with a really clear understanding of the project's purpose. This purpose will drive the rest of the project and is critical in creating buy-in and engagement.

If you are handed a project with a vague scope, or the project is not much more than just a good idea, your first task should be writing a draft scope statement and confirming it with leadership or initiators. I also recommend drafting a list of your key stakeholders and the roles they might play in the project during initiation. In mission-driven organizations, our stakeholders—our project teams, clients, and users—are probably the most critical element to project success, so we want to identify them early. We can confirm our stakeholders and roles in planning, but considering all of our stakeholders in initiation helps set our project up for success.

Another activity that I recommend during project initiation is a project kickoff. So often, particularly if a project is starting once funding is won or approved, we tend to dive right into the first project team meeting. Because of how critical our stakeholders are to project success, I recommend ending project initiation with a launch or kickoff meeting. This meeting can mark that transition from initiation into planning and usually incorporates some of our key stakeholders.

So for your kickoff or launch meeting, you could invite initiators—those folks with that idea or who directed you to begin the project—your project team members, if you already know them, and other key stakeholders, like those who are going to be participating in or impacted by the project or its outcomes. So you can use this initiation meeting to discuss the project scope and how it relates to your broader mission or strategic priorities, ensuring everybody is on the same page. You can discuss and confirm any parameters, and you can consider whether anyone is missing from the stakeholder list and confirm or start assigning project roles.

This type of meeting can move us into planning, so you may want to begin some planning activities during this meeting. So our goal with a kickoff is to clarify purpose, support buy-in and engagement, and set the stage for collaboration. When we move straight from idea to planning and skip or rush through these initiation activities, I think we get off to a shakier start. Initiation allows us to gain some clarity that can support us and our teams throughout the rest of the project. How we begin can influence how we end, so start your project off on firm footing.

So for more help with project initiation, check out our project initiation meeting agenda. This free download of a meeting agenda template to help kick off your project is available at yazdaniconsulting.com/resources. So it can be used to support project kickoff or for your first team meeting or those initial meetings with key stakeholder groups. There are also many other templates available on our website at that same link, from planning checklists and stakeholder role guides to meeting agendas that can help with initiation and planning.

And thank you, Anne-Marie, for your comment; I'm glad this is helpful. Now if you need more hands-on support leading projects and teams or initiating projects, visit our project solutions page at yazdaniconsulting.com/projects to learn about how we can help. Okay, so I'm happy to take questions you have about project initiation. Please add them in the comments. There is a bit of a streaming delay, so I'm going to give folks a few moments to add their questions. If I'm not able to answer your question live, I'm happy to respond later in the comments.

And you can find all of the ways to contact me at yazdaniconsulting.com/contact. Please reach out if you'd like to talk about project initiation. Okay, so a question I often get about initiation is, "What's the difference between initiation and planning?" Some of these activities seem really similar, and I would say that while there is some overlap in the parameters and elements we consider during both initiation and planning, their purpose and how we consider them is really different.

So I would say initiation is about establishing value and creating buy-in, while planning is about how we will be taking an action. So we may consider during initiation who our stakeholders are and the roles they're going to play, but we're going to plan for how they're going to execute on those roles during planning. We might set a firm deadline for the project in initiation, but we're going to really lay out that calendar of events for the length of the project during planning.

Now many of us, including project managers, aren't used to participating in initiation activities. Often these are done above us, outside of us, and we think of our value as being in planning, right? That's often what we're brought in to do. But I really think if we don't at least look back at initiation to make sure we have clarity on things like parameters and scope, we really can lose momentum and often we start planning for things that aren't what we should be planning for.

And so we really need to get that clarity on value and purpose and the expectations that we need to meet so that we're able to plan well and ensure engagement. So when we lead project initiation activities, or at least have a couple of conversations with our leadership or other initiators to understand what they think about some of these areas, I really think you're setting yourself up for a better project.

Great, so feel free to comment or reach out and message me with any additional questions. And thank you for participating in our impactful projects and planning microtraining series. You can visit yazdaniconsulting.com/ipp to view all of the sessions in the series and learn about upcoming microtrainings. Thank you.