How To Start A Successful Project

If you do repetitive start of new projects then you might obviously have a plan to run all the routine preparations before the actual work commences. This involves many things like planning resources, budgeting, involving team, as well as managing and communicating requirements. Certainly, it's a common thing you forget something, and then start making some corrections in the middle of the project, thus shifting the milestones, worrying your clients and distracting team. Conversely, you wouldn't miss anything if you have a checklist of mandatory items that simply need to be done.

Let us look closer over a plain actions that are usually taken first.

* Project name -> communicated, available
* Goal -> outlined, shared, discussed
* Team -> assigned, communicated
* Milestones -> planned, submitted
* Requirements -> recorded, organized and shared
* Cases -> assigned to team

Each line of the checklist consists of artifact and a set of actions to be accomplished. For example, the project goal needs to be defined, disseminated in team, discussed and possibly changed afterward. Although the order of the actions in checklist is not strict, it's easy to navigate and just tick the items done.

You can always invent your own checklist or just adopt the one from some methodology like XP, RUP or Agile. I will be writing more about each of these methodologies so keep tuned!