Starting the Project out Right

First – make sure all stakeholders are at the first meeting. Also ask the Project Sponsor to tell everyone you are the Project Manager (transferring authority). Talk about the processes you will use and the communication everyone can excpect from you.

Once you have a definitive scope, write a requriements document to meet that scope and distriubute it and sign it off. After this point, any change in scope should go through  your defined scope mamangement process.

Do your schedule as a team and construct a Work Breakdown Structure. Break each task down until it is no more than 40 hours or less. Add them back up to get the schedule. If management doesn’t want the date you’ve come up with ask them which scope they want to drop. Remind them that each feature takes time from you (as PM), the coder, the tester, the documenter and suppport.

As you move from requirements to specifications and coding, adding scope is even more costly. It disrupts everyone. Try to put it in a subsequent release.

Above all, make sure you communicate schedule, risks and status very frequently; and hopefully have a team site on SharePoint that everyone can see.