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Project managers who assume to get past the steering group approval & business case can help them to start the work may not be heading in the right direction by skipping lead activities in advanced projects as this is another time consuming stage of project initiation.

During the initiation phase of advanced projects project managers need to take risks such as starting the activities which are yet to be approved. It's not that you start working on all the activities in the very beginning but all some of the activities which require early attention. After identifying such tasks you may need to approach the suitable line managers to make sure they would help in their respective fields and convince them to identify the unapproved resources. Two more problems you may face here are these line managers are ready to help or reluctant to extend the help.

These line managers needs to be encouraged to indulge in the tasks and should define boundaries within which they need to operate a…

Project manager must maintain high standards to produce the business case for the advanced projects as there are large investments involved. Poorly devised business case will make the company nervous and continue to prevaricate the project. Generally, building the business case is the responsibility of the project sponsor and involves lot of time to develop. Hence, project manager spend adequate time on rest of the 3 themes rather than focusing on business case. Project managers should actively participate in all the 4 phases regardless of who is responsible and must ensure best business case in in place to contribute project success.
Project sponsors welcome any kind of external help offered to build the business case. Project managers must avail this opportunity and contribute to the business case development. Adding production of business case to the targets often make the project sponsor sidelined and feel inferior. This may result in that the project sponsor may not sign the busin…

"Stakeholders are those who are interested in the project are affected by the activity of the Project." ex: External regulators, Project Management Office (PMO), Project Manager(s), Project Sponsor/Executive, Suppliers and Users etc.

Management of stakeholders is often overlooked and it's a very important that project managers should pay special attention to them to attain several benefits involved which helps to run the project smoothly. Project managers should avoid looking at this task (Stakeholders management plan) as an activity that is to be completed as a part of project management life cycle.

The main purpose of the stakeholders management plan is to make sure the relationships among the principal people involved in the project have been discussed and the information flow between them is agreed. In contrary, these principal people won't pay much attention to this task and they actually allow the relaxations on project deadlines and complain about that they a…

"A Good Start is half done". An effective project manager should overcome the challenge of optimizing time during this stage as several elements and people come into picture in which lot of time is consumed to decide and makes it difficult to carry the initial momentum. With experienced Project managers this stage can be short and successful.

A project manager sets out and adopt a project life cycle in which he defines range of activities and tasks and the order in which the tasks needs to be undertaken and executed. Most of the advanced projects will be disintegrated into several smaller projects and shall be run in parallel to share the same final goal in order to optimize the time and resources.

Small projects in turn will have their own life cycle and people involved in these project operate in different ways to deliver and in contrast the people in the long term project life cycle operate in a more relaxed manner which give raise to frustration and conflicts among the …