Project Management

Identify whose support will be needed. Try to identify who’s in
the best position to help and support your project.

Identify who is likely to work against you. Identify the parties
who may feel threatened by your project or who, for whatever
reason, would not like your project to succeed.

Secure a project sponsor.Identify someone in management
who can serve as a sponsor for your project. Sponsors are typi-
cally members of management who have a significant amount
at stake in the success or failure of your project. Sponsors can
work through political issues that are beyond your sphere of
influence.

Address unrealistic targets or constraints.If your proposed
project targets, specifically schedule and cost, exceed manage-
ment expectations, you may be forced into a situation where
you’re pressured into accepting cost, schedule, or other targets
that are unrealistic. If this happens, I’d urge you to pursue either
or both of these options:

1. Respond with a data-driven analysisthat suggests that
   the project targets are unrealistic. This may or may not
   work, but it’s certainly worth a shot.


2. Continue to publish documents that display your original
   cost and schedule targets. Once you publish documents
   with unrealistic targets, you’ve pretty much sealed your
   fate and doomed yourself to project failure.

Project Manager’s Checklist for Chapter 4

❏ Identifying the customer's true need—the most fundamen-

tal problem or opportunity—is the first and most important

step in the entire project process.

❏ Using financial criteria is the preferred method for deter-

mining whether projects are worth doing. After all, when

you boil it down, projects are really financial investments.

However, non-financial criteria can be used when financial

information is unavailable or expensive to obtain.

Defining Your Project 75

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