Comments (0)

Project Management’s first phase – The Concept Phase

Project Management Concept Phase the Project Manager and his team must decide whether the project should be taken on or not. To arrive at this decision depends on a number of important factors:

Factors to consider during the Project Management Concept Phase

Is the project in the best interests of the Company? Is this what the Company does, or will the Company be diversifying too much? What does the Company anticipate the break even point of the project to be? What is the Company prepared to spend on the project? What sort of return on investment does the Company hope to achieve? Are there any cash flow problems that need to be taken into consideration? And so on.

Appoint a Project Management Committee

To answer the above questions a Project Manager needs to have broad idea what the project is all about and how it will fit in with the Company’s Mission and Vision statements. A SWOT analysis of the Company will assist in making a decision as to whether the project should go ahead or not. The Project Manager should document his findings and call a meeting with all stake holders to analyze these preliminary findings to decide if the project will go ahead or not. We don’t just blunder forth with a project before doing at least a preliminary analysis of the Company and the Project it wishes to undertake.

If the decision is to go ahead

If all the stake holders are in agreement that the project should go ahead then a Project Management Committee will need to be identified. A Project Management Committee should be setup to administer the Project. Depending on the scale of the Project, the Project Management Committee should consist of at least some of the stakeholders. The Company’s Senior Management should not shirk their responsibility towards the project.

A meeting should be held with all the members of this Committee to determine how often the committee should meet during the Project “Scope and Design” Phase and what penalties if any should be imposed on members who miss these meetings.

Other important ground rules for the “Scope and Design” Phase should be established at this meeting. The Project Manager should chair the meeting and take the lead in making recommendations as to the communication protocols and documentation to be used during the subsequent phases of the Project. These decisions should then be minuted. The minutes should be distributed to all Project Management Committee members as soon as possible.