JUANNE: Hi, there.
Welcome.
This course is all about initiating a project
successfully.
If you haven't gone through our foundational course yet,
we recommend checking it out.
It covers the foundations of project management
and contains lots of helpful information
for anyone wanting to start a career in this field.
There are lots of people around the world like you
who are hoping to learn the skills to get a project
management role.
Maybe you'd prefer to take a specialized certification
rather than a four-year degree.
Maybe you're looking for an affordable way
to stand out among competition.
Maybe you're interested in changing your career.
Whatever your reason for being here,
we are glad you've joined us.
This program is rooted in the belief
that a strong foundation in project management
can help anyone start a great career as a project manager.
Before we begin this course, let me introduce myself.
My name is JuAnne, and I'll be your instructor
for this course.
As a senior program manager at Google for the past eight
years, I have worked on cross-functional projects
involving product managers, software engineers, user
experience designers, network operations, customer support,
and more to build software used at Google
and used by Google Cloud customers.
I began my career working as a liaison between customers
and engineers, documenting requirements
on software development projects.
As I became involved in larger projects,
I started to manage the timelines of the projects
and coordinate the work of the different teams that had to get
involved to finish the project.
Before I knew it, I was the de facto project manager.
I have accumulated my knowledge through formal and informal
training, finding practical application in finance,
insurance, and tech companies.
I'm super excited to be sharing with you more about the project
management discipline.
During this course, you'll learn all the steps
for kicking off a project.
We'll start with an overview of initiation,
which is the phase that allows ideas to come together and form
the beginnings of a plan for a project.
You'll identify the individual components of initiation,
like the project scope, goals, and deliverables.
You'll also learn how to measure the success of a project.
This is a super important piece of the puzzle.
After all, you want to be able to meet or exceed
all of the requirements for a successful project, right?
Later, we'll talk about how to identify stakeholders.
Stakeholders have a direct interest in the project's
completion and success.
We'll teach you about some really helpful tools
you can use to define project roles and responsibilities
and more tools and resources you typically
need to complete the work of a project.
Finally, we'll introduce documentation
that can help your team prepare for project kickoff.
Exciting, right?
The skills you'll learn in this course
will help you start projects of your own.
We can't wait to get into these topics with you.
[WHIMSICAL MUSIC]
Because initiation is the first phase of the project,
it's really important to get it right.
A well-planned initiation results
in a strong foundation for your project
and sets it up for success.
Initiation begins after a problem or opportunity
has been identified within an organization.
Often, stakeholders like senior leaders at a company
will initiate a project to address a specific need
for the business.
For example, perhaps the company would
like to roll out a new product, improve employee well-being,
or reduce costs in a certain department.
It's your responsibility as the project manager
to help identify the project goals, resources,
and other details based on initial discussions
with the project stakeholders.
Even though someone else might come up
with an idea for the project, it's
still your job to figure out all the important pieces that
need to come together in order to get the work done.
The initiation phase is a crucial time
for asking stakeholders to write questions,
performing research, determining resources, and clearly
documenting the key components of a project.
Doing this will help you solidify the scope
or the boundary of the project.
If this seems a bit overwhelming, don't worry.
We'll talk more about project scope later on in this course.
If a project isn't initiated properly,
things can go wrong pretty fast.
For example, without sufficient understanding
of the project's goals, you might
underestimate what resources you need
or how long the project might take.
Or, without agreeing with stakeholders
on what success looks like, you might
think the project was completed successfully
while the stakeholders might think it
didn't accomplish their goals.
Getting on the same page and gaining clarity
during the initiation phase can save a lot of time
and extra work for everyone throughout the project.
Proper initiation also helps ensure
that the benefits of the project outcomes
will outweigh the costs of the project.
To determine this, you'll do what's
called a cost-benefit analysis, which
is the process of adding up the expected
value of a project, the benefits,
and comparing them to the dollar cost.
To do this, you will work with stakeholders
to consider a few questions.
To determine the benefits of a project,
those questions might include--
what value will this project create?
How much money could this project save our organization?
How much money will it bring in from existing customers?
How much time will be saved?
How will the user experience be improved?
And to determine the costs of a project,
those questions might include--
how much time will people have to spend on this project?
What will be the one-time costs?
Are there any ongoing costs?
What about long-term costs?
The benefits of a project should always outweigh the costs.
So it's really important that you consider these questions
early on.
Coming up, we'll talk more about the initiation phase
and explore the key components of initiating a project.
[WHIMSICAL MUSIC]
There are several key components of initiation
that you need to consider in order for your project
to be successful--
goals, scope, deliverables, success criteria, stakeholders,
and resources.
First, you need to consider the goals of a project.
The goal is what you've been asked to do
and what you're trying to achieve.
All projects should have clear goals,
and often, those will be determined by senior company
leaders with your help.
From there, you would begin to consider the project scope.
This is the process to define the work that needs to happen
to complete the project.
You also need to consider project deliverables.
These are the tangible and intangible outcomes
of a project.
Once the goals, scope, and deliverables are determined,
you need to consider success criteria.
Success criteria are the standards
by which you measure how successful a project was
in reaching its goals.
Another important consideration is your stakeholders.
Stakeholders are key to making informed decisions
at every step of the project, including the initiation phase.
They are the people who both have an interest in and are
affected by the completion and success of a project.
As a result, they are often instrumental in determining
the goals, objectives, deliverables,
and success criteria of a project
from coming up with the idea, to outlining their expectations
of its results.
As you move through the initiation phase,
it's your job to ensure that you understand
the needs of the project's stakeholders early on.
It's also your role to ensure that all stakeholders are
in agreement on the goals and overall mission of the project
before moving on to the next phase.
Now, let's talk about resources.
Resources generally refer to the budget, people, materials,
and other items that you'll have at your disposal.
It's super important to think carefully about those pieces
early on.
No one wants to get started on a project only
to realize halfway through that they
don't have enough money or enough people to complete
the work.
That would be a mess.
Finally, once you've established your goals, scope,
deliverables, success criteria, stakeholders, and resources,
it's time to create a project charter.
A project charter is a document that contains
all the details of a project.
Project charters clearly define the project and its goals
and outline what is needed to accomplish them.
A project charter allows you to get organized, set up
a framework for what needs to be done,
and communicate those details to others.
Once you've drafted the charter, you
would then review the document with key stakeholders
to get their approval to move into the planning stage.
Coming up, you'll learn more about project charters
and even get the chance to create one yourself.
ROWENA: Congratulations on finishing this video
in the Google Project Management Certificate.
Access the full learning experience, including
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