Preparing the Project Brief

Kenneth has 14 years of healthcare experience in government and private industry. Over eight years of experience managing healthcare IT projects, operations, contracts, and personnel. His work experience includes project management, contracts and procurements, data analysis, claims adjudication, business writing, and business process modeling. Kenneth was certified in 2006 as a Project Management Professional.

  CRM   Knowledge Management   Lessons Learned   Stakeholder Management  

Before a project gets going, your potential customers need to know what the project is all about and how it is going to be successful. For some projects, you might be able to write a thousand-page proposal about the project--but it is much more likely that most projects need to be sold in a few minutes during a manager’s meeting. If you have two minutes to sell your project, are you ready?

Plan Before Committing
Before you ever commit a word to paper or speak up in a meeting, you need to have a plan for your brief. This plan should boil down your project into a few words or statements. Try to ask how you can convey the entire scope of the project to someone who knows nothing about your industry or project management at all. What do they need to understand what you are trying to do and quickly grasp the importance of finishing the project? Of course your audience probably will have a good grasp of the business, but it will help your brief if you can plan for the least-common denominator.

It may take a few days or weeks to plan out what you would say, and you can waste as many words and as much paper as you want during this process. In fact, the more drafts and revisions you go through, the closer you are to getting to a good solid project brief that will help sell your project to the stakeholders and customers.

The 10-Word Summary
Now that you have …

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