Justify Your Project

  ProjectsAtWork  

Best practices for determining your project’s justification.

A key requirement for project management success is knowing why the project was created in the first place. In addition to helping ensure that the appropriate objectives and desired results are framed at the outset, this knowledge energizes project team members and fuels their commitment to achieve those objectives and results.

In the newly updated Project Management for Dummies, 3rd Edition (Wiley Publishing, Inc., May 2010), author Stanley Portny, PMP, recommends taking the following steps to determine your project’s justification:

> Identify your project’s drivers, and determine their needs and expectations. (Project drivers are people for whom you perform the project; they have some authority to define the results of the project.)

> Look for existing statements that confirm your project’s support of your organization’s priorities. Consult your organization’s long-range plan, annual budget, capital appropriations plan, and key performance indicators, or KPIs, as well as notes from meetings where your project was proposed and discussed. Also contact the people who attended those meetings.

> When checking with people or written documents for confirmation of your project’s justification, do the following:

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