Think before you act

Early start of the project always results in late finish – a lesson I have learnt specially for software projects which heavily depend on ones knowledge and understanding.

It pays to spend quality time on understanding the project, the business need, the client and deciding the overall execution approach (externally with client and internally with team) before project execution begins. The dictum "Think before you act" applies best to project management and it takes a lot of skills and common sense to think and plan before acting.

According to an ancient Hindu tradition, people meditate and worship Lord Ganesha before starting any noble work (executing projects is a noble task!) The message here is to meditate before taking an action and same applies to project initiation as well. Spending time on planning has to be an integral part of project estimate and project manager has to ensure that both the stakeholders and project team have clarity on scope, time, quality and other project expectations. Team should know what is expected out of them and clients/stakeholders should also be aware of expectations from them in terms of approvals, signoffs, feedbacks and responses. 

What all areas requires a serious thought while planning a project ? My (initial) list goes like this.

– Project objectives and business need
– Scope of work (brief)
– Critical success factors
– Constraints and dependencies
– Expectations from the client/stakeholders (Signoffs/approvals/feedbacks etc)
– Expectations from the team (quality, schedule adherence, standards etc)
– Team structure, roles and responsibilities
– Hiring/trainings required
– Major milestones
– Details of the first milestone (to the team members)
– Major risks and its mitigation plan
– Communication mechanism (should be defined with project team and also with customers)
– Overall execution approach (process to be followed at each stage of lifecycle)
– Quality, Test and Review Mechanisms (QA involvement in overall planning process)

Anything you'd like to add? Ideas are welcome.

[Update 20-Jun-2006]  A very relevant quote I read somewhere.

Act in haste and repent at leisure;
Code too soon and debug forever.
-Raymond Kennington