Friday 22 February 2019

Project Initiation checklist excel template & Example

A project initiation checklist is document used for initial stage of project management life cycle to ensure the project stages' plans for objectives, scope, deliverables, and processes are accurate and sufficient for success of a project. When management start any project, project initiation checklist is much important and require to involve for verify the steps.


The project initiation checklist may contain the verification details that may help to project leader to ensure all the documents are complied. Even the stages and elements that require to ensure the success of a project. Usually project initiation checklist may contain: project goals details, project scope, project organization, business case, constraints, stakeholder’s details, risks that associated with project details, controls measure and control process, reporting frameworks, and summary of entire project.
Project Initiation checklist template


What to include in project initiation checklist template?

Describe the general information about the project such as project name, project manager name, date of the preparation this document, project number. You can also describe the project objective details in the general filed, even you can make the separate project objective in the checklist.
You can also describe the project background details in the brief. This details may help you to plan and execute the project smoothly.

Project Scope

Here are some things that you can add with specific questions. This question list may help you maintain the project scope and its related details. Some of the questions as you can see as below as example:
  • What business functions are in and out of scope?
  • What locations are in and out of scope? (attach a Scoping Diagram for clarity)
  • What are the project interfaces?
  • What business procedures are required?
  • What production operations procedures are required?
  • Will an Acceptance Test Plan and testing be required?
  • Will Systems Analysis be required, if so what’s needed?
  • What training is required?
  • What documentation is required?
  • What are the critical requirements?

Constraints

Usually the management always expecting the scope of the project expand to get maximum benefits from the outputs. But it is obvious that management can't ignore the constraints of the project. Hence, here are some of the important questions that help you to verify the document and activities accordingly:
  • What is the maximum cost of the project?
  • What is the latest project completion date?
  • What are the inter project dependencies?
Briefly describe any issues that will need to be addressed prior to or during the project.

Deliverable:  Project Charter

  • Alignment with Strategic Direction: (1) Is Project aligned with Claims Strategic Plan?
  • Identify Project Champion/Project Manager: (1) Has a Project Champion / Project Manager been assigned?  (2) Has a project initiation team been identified?
  • Identify Project Sponsor: (1) Has a Project Sponsor been identified? (2)  Has sponsor(s) formally accepted accountability for the project?
  • Define Business Problem/Opportunity: (1) Has BN/O been identified?  (2) Has the Business Need/Opportunity been documented in Project Charter?

Project Organization

  • Project Sponsor (1) Who agrees to this project setup? (2) Who will sign off the requirements? (3) Who will remove obstacles? (4) Who will accept the finished product?
  • Project Lead: Who will execute the project initiation (e.g., Project Manager or Business Analyst)
  • Resources & Responsibilities: (1) What additional resources will be required? (2) What are they expected to do?

Schedule

  • Starting & End date of the project. 
  • Estimation: (1) How many effort Hours? (2) How many elapsed hours? (3) What assumptions are you making?
  • Final Product: What is the end product?
  • Project Approach: What are the milestones?
  • Interim Products: What are the products of the milestones?

Business Case

  • Project Justification: (1) Why do this project? (2) What happens if we don’t do it? (3) Why does it now? (4) How critical will the impact of the project be?
  • Risks: What could go wrong? (both systems-related and user-related)
  • Counter-measures: How will you avoid this?
  • Costs: List all hardware, software, network, staff, facilities and other costs

At the end of the project initiation checklist, you can describe the details of the approvals from authorities. Usually, you can describe the client requester details, sign and date, department manager comments and sign, project manager as well IT manager's comments and signature for the approval of the checklist.

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