What's the Most Important First Step in Starting a Project?

Q: When you are asked to do a project, what is the first key step that needs to be taken to set the project on the right course?

A: Governance - a sustainable decision-making board

There are many first things that can be done, such as, writing a charter, defining the scope, etcetera; however, projects start moving without much attention to who are all the key stakeholders and how they need to interact:

• The champion / executive sponsor - one who can make or break the project
• Project sponsor - one who really needs the project
• Project manager - one who gets it done
• Steering committee - key, responsible stakeholders who help with evaluating issues and making decisions to guide the project and the project manager
• Other stakeholders - people who are dependent or going to be seriously impacted by the new project and could through up roadblocks
• Various processes are needed too, for instance:
• defining the roles and responsibilities and clearly communicating the expectations to the people involved;
• what information to collect and report, how often i.e., status reporting;
• defining a decision-making process;
• defining a conflict resolution process, etc.

If you don't spend some time setting this all up at the beginning stages of a project, the project starts to go in various directions without good focus, you hash and rehash the same types of issues, progress is slow, you start to encounter problems throughout various phases - for example questions like these are raised: "what is the project about; what are they doing; why isn't it getting done; why aren't we involved; etc.".  Also, resourcing becomes a problem and ultimately the project manager's life becomes increasingly difficult.