Project Management For Dummies®

Chapter 11. Starting Your Team Off on the Right Foot

In This Chapter

• Making final touches on team member assignments

• Creating your team's identity

• Developing your team's operating procedures

• Making it official

• Planning the post‐project review

After intense work on a tight schedule, you submit your project plan for review and approval. A few days later, your boss comes to you and says,

• “I have some good news and some bad news. Which would you like to hear first?”

• “Tell me the good news,” you respond.

• “Your plan's been approved.”

• “So, what's the bad news?”

• “Now you have to do the project!”

Starting your project off correctly is a key to ultimate success. Your project plan describes what you'll produce, the work you'll do, how you'll do it, when you'll do it, and the resources you'll need. You based your plan on the information you had at the time, and, if information wasn't available, you made assumptions. The more time between your plan's completion and its approval, the more changes you're going to find in your plan's assumptions.

As you prepare to start your project, you need to reconfirm or update the information in your plan, determine or reaffirm which people will play a role in your project, and prepare the systems and procedures that will support your project's performance. This chapter tells you how to accomplish these tasks and get your project off to a strong start.

Finalizing Your Project's Participants

A project audience is a person or group that supports, is affected by, or is interested ...