Guide to Project Management: Getting it right and achieving lasting benefit, 2nd Edition

Chapter 4

Articulating the vision

ON MAY 25TH 1961, John F. Kennedy, president of America, said:

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.

This clear, measurable rallying cry galvanised the energy and enthusiasm of a nation and resulted in the extraordinary spectacle on July 20th 1969 of the first manned mission to land on the moon. If the vision statement had been any more verbose than the president’s pithy 31 words, it would have lost its power and impact to motivate. However, behind that statement would have been an enormous set of expectations from others, which, if the initiative was to maintain momentum and focus for almost a decade, would require analysis, expression, communication and promotion. If a vision is to be shared, it is only to be expected that people will wish to contribute to it.

Identify the stakeholders

Any project’s vision must accommodate and express the wishes of the three groups described earlier: the user, the specialist and those who fund the project. Yet each will already have their own preferred way of articulating what is important to them. At some point, the users will expect to complete a needs statement. On receipt, the specialists will intend to develop a solution outline. And to justify the entire initiative, the sponsor should seek to construct a commercial cost justification (which will be explored in detail in Chapter ...