218 Project Management
should be fully documented and maintained for reference
by the project team and other interested parties. In lieu of
a VoC analysis, a marketing study may be performed; the
key difference is that market analysis doesn’t focus on
interviewing as the sole source of customer input.Project Definition Document.The Project Definition Document
is essentially a response to the Project Requirements Document.
The Project Requirements Document describes a problem; the
Project Definition Document describes the solution. It, too, is a
foundational project document that can be constructed in vari-
ous ways. However, it should contain certain specific elements
(see Chapter 4, “Preparing the Project Definition Document”).
- Statement of Work.The Statement of Work is a narrative
document that describes the proposed project solution
and outlines in limited detail the work to be done. It often
includes a listing of major project deliverables, the general
approach or methods for doing the work, and how suc-
cess will be measured. It is the “what” component of the
project definition. - Preliminary Project Execution Plan. Just as the Statement
of Work describes whatis to be accomplished, the
Preliminary Project Execution Plan describes howit is to
be accomplished. This precipitates the creation of a
Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM) project plan. This is the
first version of the plan and typically includes a schedule,
cost estimate, preliminary resource plan, and many of the
same components that the final project plan will include.
The key difference is that preliminary project plans are
assumed to be relatively imprecise. As mentioned in
Chapter 8, uncertainty is very high at the beginning of
your project, so you should try to avoid using precise esti-
mates (see “Using Ranged Values When Expressing
Estimated Outcomes”).
Project Proposal. It’s likely that you’ll have to prepare some sort
of proposal for management approval. You can construct this