Project Creation - The Rysigo Best Practice Series

“What do you mean? I thought you would know!” was the reaction I got from a program mgr that I met at a business social event I attended a few years ago. I had just asked him, “What is a project?”  The result was a 15-minute discussion of how the concept of what a traditional project is, how it can be managed and the way in which that has evolved over the last few years. I’m not sure whether he was speechless after being impressed or bored! 

I’m of the opinion that a project can be anything you want it to be providing it consumes resources, has an objective and timeline in which to get the work done and there is a need to track its financials. Obvious right? That’s what I thought too until I happened to have been involved with some interesting accounts a sample of which are:

• ·      The movie Star Wars leveraged a project to manage and track the costs for a single scene.
• ·       A project is used to track the decommissioning of nuclear warheads at this foreign establishment.
• ·      A project is used to manage the layoff of workers at a car factory.
• ·      A country was developed using project applications.

Of course, I cannot give the names those companies/govt etc, but trust me when I say I too was pretty surprised at this diverse list. My point? People can get creative on how they can use project-based applications to manage their work. In addition, every person is in one way or another involved in project based activities and whether these are identified as such or not is irrelevant, it just means they (or the management team) haven’t realized it yet!

Applications such as Oracle Projects can be used in a variety of different ways and industries. Traditionally, most of us would think of a project as being construction related or one that is used to deliver a product to market. This series covers the many different ways in which projects can be initiated based upon the function of a division or the core business values of a company including the best approach or best practice for the project initiation process.

Projects can be initiated in a number of ways and one of the more common understood methods is that of the CRM or Customer Relationship Management applications used to track leads, opportunities and sales for existing and new customers. This type of integration into a Project based system requires an ‘event’ or ‘action’ that initiates the process of creating a Project. this event point can vary from company to company and even within different divisions. The key variant is the likeliness or probability that the work would be won. Some groups may determine that this is greater than 50% others may be more specific at say 75%.

Why would the probability have an effect on when the project is created? The project initiation process may kick off various activities that may not be charged to the project itself but involve other groups or users. For example, doing business with a new client never invoiced before may require the finance team to perform credit worthiness and risk analysis.

As more information is gathered on the scope of work and deliverables that need to be planned, budgets can start to take shape. This would typically include a potential revenue forecast that would predict the revenue that could be recognized every month for the engagement should it be won. In addition, a cost budget that breaks down the deliverables into smaller chunks or work packages assigned to project roles responsible for its completion would ensure that the project manager has determined the resources and timeline needed to deliver the project. Each one of these stages from Project Creation, Potential Revenue, Cost budget etc may occur over a period of time all dependent upon the urgency of the bid and the likeliness of the prospective client awarding the contract.

 Simple Project Initiation Flow