Lightweight Process Improvement Project startup

The source of research and development at the start of the project is a big deal for r \ \ u0026 research and development team, however, it is not easy to start a project, the process must meet many conditions to really start the project, otherwise, informal or even unreasonable projects will start the research and development work trapped. This paper mainly focuses on the project initiation procedure, possible problems and measures involved in the process.

The scenario in this article refers to the process by which product lines have products that need to be extended to customers through project implementation.

A Procedures for Project initiation

Project initiation is a cross-sectoral activity. The procedures usually contained are:

1. Proposal for Project establishment

• Objective: The aim of project proposal is to infer whether the project can be formally set up and submit the application to the decision-making of the company through pre-customer contact and analysis, which is the first entry point to be formed.
• Main role: Project proposal from the sales team
• Main steps: Sales through the customer's communication and understanding to infer whether it complies with the company's product implementation conditions and promotion methods, and for the appropriate customer to the company's decision-making proposal of the project. In the project proposal, it is necessary to expound the initial time node, the requirement of hardware and software, the function demand, the bidding method and the forecast of the success opportunity.

2. Project evaluation

• Objective: The company's decision-makers to review the proposal for the sale of the project to determine whether the project
• Main role: Corporate decision-making, including project team leader, sales team leader and technical team leader
• Main steps: The project team leader analyzes the functional requirements of the project and the initial time node, and the sales team leader analyzes the project's bidding methods and success opportunities. The technical team leader analyzes the constraints of the project. Through the tripartite joint confirmation that the project can be approved, one side objected to the proposal was dismissed. The sales team can further communicate with the customer and submit the proposal again.

3. Project Manager Appointment

• Objective: To appoint a project manager for a project that has been established.
• Main role: Project team leader
• Main steps: The project team leader is responsible for the project manager and related project implementation based on the project's source, geographic location, and current project group staffing. Once the project manager is appointed, the salesperson needs to collate the project handover form and submit it to the project manager, marking the formal handover of the project from the sales team to the project management team.

4. Project start-up meeting

• Objective: The launch of the project will mark the transfer of the project from sales to the project manager, that is, formally into the project development phase.

  It is usually necessary to ensure that the project contract is duly signed before the commencement of the project

• Main role: Project manager and Sales
• Main steps: Sales, client-side representatives, project managers and other third-party suppliers formally convene the Project initiation meeting, the project manager in accordance with the project launch report on the project's overall implementation plan and plans for the introduction. It also points out the roles and responsibilities of the client in the process of project implementation.

Two Issues in Project startup

Project initiation is usually not directly related to the research and development team, but very often it plays a decisive role in the development process. Failing to control can lead to project failures and even the morale of the research team.

Issues that may exist during project startup include the following:

1. No Project review

No project review is a process issue. If there is no project evaluation, then the sales through the individual deduction of the project, directly find the program management team to implement the project. At this time, the project management team can usually only cooperate with the sale of the possible arrangements, but the project is reasonable, project scope, technical risk, etc. are not formally evaluated. Project start-up needs corresponding resources, lack of review is often the root cause of the problem.

2. No project initiation will be

No project start-up would be fatal. Suppose someone in the research and development team said they didn't know when the project started. The project may be doomed to fail if it is not started. Project start-up is essentially a synchronization of the project stakeholder's approach to project work, a formal shift from sales to research and development, and a phased effort to reach agreement and next steps, especially from managing customer expectations. Project initiation is the best time to make the customer aware of all aspects of the project.

Suppose there are no project launches. Because some of the content at the source of the project has not been unified understanding of the project during the development of the project in the process of the process of questioning the phenomenon occurs frequently.

3. Launch of the project without signing the contract

The signing of the contract is usually responsible for the sale, the launch of the project without signing the contract will be critical, because one of the main contents of the contract is the scope and time of the project. It is certainly unreasonable to assume that the scope and time of the project have not been developed without any commitment from the user to start the research and development process.

4. The project launch will not emphasize the role and responsibilities of the client side

The project started, but the customer thought how to do the project is only the supplier to consider the matter, they just have to wait for the results, such ideas more or less exist in our customer base. This is obviously unrealistic in the system integration service industry. The client's cooperation is very much the important factor of the project cost, even the decisive factor, and the project start-up will be to tell the customer that the implementation of the project requires their full cooperation in order to complete the task according to plan.

5. No project handover form formed

The project manager has been appointed, but the new project manager doesn't even know the customer's basic information. It would be an unknown how the preparatory work for the project start-up would be. Project handover is a sign of formal acceptance of the project within the research and development team, representing the official launch of the project management work. Very often the project start-up will be unsuccessful, the project manager prior to communication with the customer a variety of snags, to a large extent due to the lack of necessary project handover process.

6. No Stakeholder analysis

The relationship analysis is an important part of the management of the project relation person. It is also a work that needs to be implemented during the project start-up phase. Lack of stakeholder analysis will generally negatively impact project planning, project requirements analysis, and project monitoring. The extreme situation may be that we need someone to follow up on something in the project plan. But even looking for someone is not clear; But the person's personality, preferences, project support attitude is not clear. Communication is very difficult to achieve the desired results. There are a lot of problems with the project, and it is necessary to ensure that the stakeholders ' information is communicated before communication.

Three Process Improvement for Project initiation

The projects mentioned in the first section launch related rules and models are simply abstractions that do not necessarily meet the full range of project requirements. is also an idealized solution to some extent. However, starting from the analysis and carding of the problem, the starting point of improving the project initiation process includes:

1. Follow the process

Project initiation involves collaboration between multiple departments, and the project manager team and the sales team often lack the opportunity to face communication due to the nature of the job. Therefore, in order to ensure the process can be controlled, must ensure the strict operation of the process.

2. Focus on Process assets

The flow of the process depends on the delivery of information, the effective delivery of information in the team is the foundation of the project start and even the whole project management, and the transmission of information needs certain media, we put the document, mail, etc. collectively referred to as the project management process assets, these process assets are we have to grasp an aspect.

3. Focus on communication

The project management team and the sales team represent a different opportunity and a voice for the customer. Because of the customer factor. Project managers and sales may have incorrect information on the project, and the incorrect claim will have a significant impact on project initiation. Need to be eliminated by strengthening communication between project managers and sales.

At the same time from project inception to formal launch. Early communication between the project manager and the customer is also a prerequisite for ensuring that the launch will be successful.

In view of the above entry points, we comb the pattern and practice of project initiation process improvement including:

1. Sales line and project line information synchronization meeting

Both the sales team and the project management team usually have regular/unscheduled meetings to ensure that the information within the team is smooth and transparent, but the information synchronization between the sales line and the project line is a necessary part of the process. Suppose the sales team and the project management team can sit together, and the sales lead the meeting. Assuming that two teams are in a distributed environment, a better approach is to split the sales team's internal meetings into two stages. The first stage is the internal information synchronization of the sales team, the second stage is the sales team leading the project team to carry out all project initiation related issues.

Usually the sales team and project manager team members work in a more mobile location, so they need to use tools and media such as teleconferencing.

2. Project initiation Process cropping

With regard to the 4 main disciplines in the project initiation process, although this article has been simplified, for some teams, not everyone is able to meet the team's status and work requirements, which requires tailoring or scaling them.

Typical of these are:

• Multi-party evaluation of Project establishment: In the face of competitors and market changes, the project timing may be fleeting. The project needs to be approved as soon as possible.

  There may be teams that do not need or are not likely to conduct project, sales, and technical tripartite reviews. It is also an efficient way for decision-making to be made by the dominant party; It is also feasible for some teams to be able to make a decision after the company's senior manager has reviewed the process, adding another link to the review process.

  However, regardless of the various tailoring methods to ensure that the timely acquisition of project information is the key to successful project evaluation

• Project contract signing Time: Same. Signing the contract is sometimes very time-consuming thing, in order not to delay the timing, the first time to convene a project to sign the contract is not an issue, but usually such a situation requires us to detailed customer analysis, customer classification and management, Assuming that a certain level of customer is not satisfied to ensure the normal signing of the contract after the commencement of the project will be held
• Process assets: The project initiation process as summarized below assets are content that can be clipped, descriptions and operations of individual fields vary depending on the project and team

3. Project start-up process asset configuration management

All process assets during project start-up ensure uniform configuration management, some of which focus on the information filtering during internal and external communication.

The process assets involved in the project initiation process are described below.

Four      Project-initiated Process assets 1. Proposal for Project establishment

The project proposal mainly contains the following points:

• Basic customer information, including contact details and address, etc.
• Time-related information. Preliminary expectations with first contact date, start time, and end time
• Project source and main content, including a brief description of the functional scope of the project design
• Opportunity for success is expected to be a preliminary estimate of the success of the project
• Review process steps. Including project, sales, technology and other parties review information
• The decision to decide whether the project was decided or not

2. Project Handover Form

The project handover form mainly contains the following points:

• Basic customer information. Includes contact information and address, etc.
• Constraints and issues. Contains descriptive descriptions of the limitations and issues that are required during the implementation of the project
• Commitment to customers, including initial response and commitment to customers on project implementation
• Customer's comments and suggestions. Contains some of the customer's views on the project

3. Project Stakeholder Registration

The stakeholder register is organized by the sales and project managers, and some of the content may be included in the project handover form. The project manager maintains a register of project relationship holders, which mainly includes the following points:

• Stakeholder basic information. Include contact information, etc.
• Stakeholder personality analysis, including stakeholder preferences, communication styles, and more.
• Stakeholder analysis of the project attitude, including stakeholder support for the project, opposition, neutrality and other attitudes analysis

4. Project Launch Report

The frequently used form of project launch reports is PPT. Mainly includes:

• Project Introduction. Basic description of the background, features, functions, etc. of the project
• Project implementation plan, including description of implementation methodology, team structure, etc.
• Project implementation Plan. Coarse-grained plan and milestone description with project implementation
• Customer needs to cooperate with the matter. Description of the customer's role and responsibilities, preliminary work arrangement, etc.

5. Project List

The project list is a comprehensive, multi-perspective project summary file. The following elements of the project need to be understood during the project initiation process:

• Project owner, including sales, project manager and other interface person information
• Project importance, project importance information divided by customer level
• The signing of the contract. Summary information about whether the project contract has been signed

Five Summary

Project startup is the first area of improvement for project management. Personal feel is a more difficult to grasp an improvement domain. Because project initiation involves extensive collaboration across multiple departments. There are also differences in the various projects. It is difficult to form standardized processes, and very many content research and development teams often have only the right to know and cannot effectively grasp them. But because of this, project start-up is a point of view that needs to be focused during the process improvement implementation. This article has carried on the carding and the summary.

The next improvement field on the project management class is the project plan.

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Lightweight Process Improvement Project startup