The AMA Handbook of Project Management, 4th Edition

CHAPTER 4

Project Initiation

Managing the Front End

PETER W.G. MORRIS AND ANDREW EDKINS, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON

We have been asked to update a chapter on the initiation of projects originally written 20 years ago for the first edition of this handbook. First, what do we mean by initiation? With respect to projects, to what does it refer? It might be the beginning of a substage of the project; it could be mobilization on site. More critically, it could refer to the initiation of the whole project.

The 1993 chapter, and its update of 2006, discussed initiation in the second of these two perspectives—as the front end of a project. It focused particularly on major projects. In doing so it used the framework of, and much of the data and evidence ...