BUS605: Strategic Project Management

During initiation you will typically create the first draft of the following items, which take a high-level view of the project:

• project charter: A "single, consolidated source of information" for project initiation and planning. It describes your current knowledge about the project and includes information such as the names of all stakeholders, a statement of your organization's needs, the history leading up to the project, the project's purpose, deliverables, and roles and responsibilities. A project charter is also sometimes called a project overview statement. It may be helpful to think of the project charter as a contract between the project team and the project sponsors.
• scope statement: A document that defines the project's scope. Defining scope, which is really the heart of the initiation phase, is discussed in detail in the next section.
• business case: An "argument, usually documented, that is intended to convince a decision maker to approve some kind of action. As a rule, a business case has to articulate a clear path to an attractive return on investment (ROI). At its simplest, a business case could be a spoken suggestion…. For more complex issues, a business case should be presented in a carefully constructed document. A business case document should examine benefits and risks involved with both taking the action and, conversely, not taking the action. The conclusion should be a compelling argument for implementation". A business case addresses these fundamental questions: 1) Why this project? 2) Why this project over another project? and 3) Why this project now?

Both the project charter and the scope statement typically evolve as the project unfolds and you learn more about the project details in the planning phase. This means that as you work through the initiation phase, you should always be thinking ahead to the following elements of the planning phase:

• work breakdown structure (WBS): A description of the tasks associated with project deliverables, often in the form of a tree diagram. A work breakdown structure "displays the relationship of each task to the other tasks, to the whole and the end product (goal or objective). It shows the allocation of responsibility and identifies resources required and time available at each stage for project monitoring and management".
• organizational breakdown structure (OBS): A description of the project team. It explains "who reports to whom, the details of the hierarchy, and the reporting structure…. Organizational breakdown structures are normally communicated visually through the use of graphs or charts. A project or general manager is listed and underneath the PM several divisions might be created, such as product development, design, materials management, and production".
• work package: A "group of related tasks within a project. Because they look like projects themselves, they are often thought of as sub-projects within a larger project. Work packages are the smallest unit of work that a project can be broken down to when creating your Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)".
• responsibility assignment matrix (RAM): A type of organizational breakdown structure in the form of a grid that typically lists project tasks in the first column and stakeholders across the top row, with tasks assigned to the various stakeholders. You can use it to determine if you have enough resources for a project, and to record who is responsible for what. RAMs come in several forms, but one of the most useful is a responsible, accountable, consult, and inform (RACI) chart, which designates each stakeholder's relationship to each task, using the following categories: responsible (actually does the work), accountable (has final authority over the activity), consulted (available to provide information about the activity), or informed (is informed after the activity is completed, often because his or her own work depends on it). (A RACI chart is sometimes also referred to as a linear responsibility chart).

Source: Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System, https://wisc.pb.unizin.org/technicalpm/chapter/project-initiation-scope-and-structure/
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