Defining Project Approach

Overview

Before any planning of the project can be done, decisions must be made regarding how the provision of a solution is going to be approached. For example, will the solution be:

	Bought 'off the shelf'
	'Made to measure'
	Developed in-house
	Contracted to third parties
	Based on an existing product
	Built from scratch
	Based on specific technologies?

It is also necessary to make sure that the way in which the work is to be conducted is in line with practices and guidelines currently understood between Customer and Supplier, and does not jeopardise the project in any way.

Context

The process takes information from the Project Directive, together with information from a range of corporate and industry sources, to produce the defined project approach. The project approach should also be used when developing the Project Quality Plan.

Process Description

The objectives of this process are to:

	Decide how the work of the project should be approached
	Identify any constraints on the way the work of the project must be carried out or the timing of certain product deliveries
	Identify the skills required to conduct the work of the project.

In order to achieve these objectives, various steps have to be undertaken:

	Examine, and if necessary refine, how the work is to be approached based on the overall direction given in the Project Directive, particularly within the Project Definition and the Business Case
	Identify any constraints on time, money, quality and resource use or availability
	Identify any corporate or industry standards which should apply to this project's products or activities
	Identify any corporate or industry statements of best practice which could apply to this project's products or activities
	Identify any security constraints which apply to the creation and long-term operation of the project deliverables
	Identify the range of options open for conducting the work of delivering the project's products and outcomes
	Identify any maintenance and operational implications which might have an effect on the choice of approach
	Identify any corporate strategies or statements of direction which could have a bearing on this project's products and activities
	Put the project in context with any other related work or corporate initiatives by establishing any external dependencies and pre-requisites
	Identify the current thinking about the provision of solutions within the industry sectors and specialist skill areas involved
	Identify the overall business criticality of the project's outcome, and the current assessment of business risk
	Consider how the finished product can be brought into use
	Identify any training need for User personnel
	Evaluate the possible approaches against the identified criteria and parameters
	Select the most appropriate approach.

Responsibilities

The Project Manager is responsible for carrying out this process. However, the work will need to be done by people skilled in the specialist areas involved, with input from project support and assurance roles, under the overall direction of the Supplier Director.

Information Needs

Management information	Usage	Explanation
Project Directive	Input	This product contains the information upon which this process's decisions need to be made
Project Approach	Output	This forms part of the Project Plan description within the Project Foundation Document and is an input to Planning Quality

Key Criteria

	Has an approach been selected which maximises the chance of achieving overall success for the project?
	Have the operational and support issues been addressed when selecting the approach to ensure that the benefits have the best chance of being realised?
	Given the approach selected, are risks being taken on a project which is critical to corporate success, or which is very high profile?
	Alternatively, are opportunities being missed to experiment, and potentially learn some lessons for the future, on a low-risk and/or non-critical project?
	Have risks to the various approaches been identified and evaluated so that the most appropriate options have been selected?
	Is there a need to bring in external resources? If so, does this have any impact on the mode of working?