If you set off to, say, Moscow, by going in the opposite direction, you’ve either destroyed your chance of getting there or increased your time, cost and complexity of getting there.

So it is with projects — a false or mis-focused start can cause disaster or unnecessary extra time and cost (and reduced value realized).

Project initiation is not an intuitive action. People don’t initiative projects every day or even every week or month; it is something they tend to do occasionally and therefore are not practiced or know exactly what to do.

To get project initiation right you need to, for example,
know your intent - what are you trying to do?
know your scope - what’s in and out of scope?
know your deliverables - what is this initiative supposed to deliver (as a basis for moving on)?

Our set of project initiation guides allows you to

1. define a terms of reference
2. incorporate the right scope
3. define your ‘desired business outcomes’ correctly
4. identify the available benefits
5. plan the necessary activities and change
6. and report your progress and results.

The formal project management tools and approaches can come later, let’s get going!

How to initiate a project