Initiating and Implementing an IT Project

Project Initiation will typically begin with a formal stakeholder meeting to agree the Methodology and Approach to be used, and therefore what the Initiation phase must include.

The methodology selected & the nature of the project will then determine the detail required within the following deliverables in order to complete the project Initiation phase:
• Project Management Plan (or Project Charter)
• Quality Plan
• Communication Plan
• Risk Management Plan
• Issues Management Plan
• Change / Requirements Management Plan
• Project Schedule (i.e. timelines, dependencies, etc.)
• Resource / Stakeholder Management Plan
• Financial Management Plan

The Project Manager will have responsibility for ensuring that all Project Initiation deliverables (as required by the methodology) are agreed. For small projects, one deliverable will typically cover all of the above.

If the ‘customer’, or any other third parties, have their own methodologies that need to be integrated, then this must be specifically considered within each deliverable.

Project Initiation will then typically terminate with another formal stakeholder meeting to sign-of all Initiation deliverables.

The Project Implementation phase can take many forms, depending on the project approach, the design / architecture / technology employed, and the environment that the system is being deployed into. Typically an Implementation Plan is agreed and signed off toward the end of the System & Integration Testing Phase.

Most methodologies consider that execution of the ‘implementation’ phase begins once a System successfully meets entry criteria for User Acceptance Testing. UAT planning will have involved scripting & sign-off of the Acceptance test scripts, plus agreeing the UAT exit criteria. Production Maintenance & Support staff will usually need to be up-skilled in parallel, and possibly end-user training as well.

Once User Acceptance has been obtained, the system is formally handed over to be ‘productionised’. How this is achieved will depend on the system design & architecture, plus factors such as:
• Synchronisation required with other project releases
• ‘Big Bang’, phased or parallel-run implementation requirements
• DR / BCP / Support readiness, End-user training, etc.

The Implementation phase will typically wind up with formal Post Implementation and/or Post Project reviews, where lessons learned from the project as a whole become the focus.