A leader is an essential part of project management.
Discuss
The Project's Mission Statement
the dimensions of project leadership. How can the project leader use the project's mission statement to establish the direction of the project?
Be sure to discuss specific concepts project initiation, planning, launch, execution, and closing
All projects have a mission. That mission is to help address some need, solve some problem, or seize some opportunity for a client. Constructing a formal mission statement helps leaders to understand and clarify the broader aims of a project, and mission statements themselves play a number of useful roles in it. Writing a mission statement is the first step project leaders need to take. As a project leader begins to organize the project around its mission, it is important as well to identify the important stakeholders of the project. Who those stakeholders are, and what interests they have in the project, are important determinants of any project's success or failure. What is a Project Mission Statement and What Role does it Play? A mission statement states the purpose of a project—its general direction and aims. In a few sentences or paragraphs, it states what the project and its sponsoring clients are trying to achieve. Mission statements play a number of roles in a project, but two are very important. The first is that a mission statement helps establish and maintain the project's overall direction. The second is that it can help establish "common ground" among a project's stakeholders. Provides Project Direction Many people play different roles in a project and make a variety of contributions to it. All those roles and contributions are supposed to fit together in some way to produce what the project is expected to deliver. Mission statements help tie all these contributions together. In managerial terms, a mission statement helps provide unity of purpose and unity of effort in the project. It does so by clarifying the project's goals and requirements. When a project team is first assembled, for example, the mission statement provides a common orientation to the project and its direction. As work is broken down and assigned, members can see how their efforts contribute to the project's mission as a whole. As a project moves forward, project members quite often work at different locations and narrow their project focus to their own particular jobs. The project's mission statement can help team members make sure their individual efforts will contribute to the team's goals for the entire project. In a similar manner, those outside the project team can also assess their contributions in terms of the project's mission. Mission statements provide suppliers, consultants, regulators, and other external contributors with a common idea of the aims of a project and their role in it. Establishes Common Ground Mission statements that are designed with the principal stakeholders' advice and consent become a declaration of the stakeholders' common aim. As such, they provide common ground for those stakeholders' interests. That common ground can be used throughout the project to keep stakeholder ties strong, especially when unforeseen events arise and call for project changes. In these cases, the interests of different stakeholders may come into conflict, but mission statements help the principal stakeholders to keep their "eyes on the prize"—the project's ultimate purpose. During such times, the broader aims of a mission statement can provide a common "venue" where stakeholders can negotiate in good faith. Stakeholders in the Project's Mission Any project will have a number of stakeholders—those who have an interest in the mission of a project or how it will be achieved and who can deeply affect it in some way. Success or failure of a project often turns on how well project leaders identify and work with these critical project stakeholders. Important stakeholders in any project include the clients of the project and the host or performing organization in which the project is being done. The project team is an important stakeholder, as are the end users and various resource suppliers. The Client The project's client or customer1 is the reason a project exists. It is the person or organization for whom the project is being conducted and who is paying for it. Every project is designed to address some need brought by a client, and the client is the ultimate source of funding and resources for the project. Clients' interests lie in having their needs met as much as possible, as quickly as possible, and, generally, for as low a price as possible. The Host Organization The performing or host organization2 is the organization in which the project is conducted. The traditional model is that clients come to an organization to serve their needs. The organization, in turn, assembles project teams to do so. The interests of host organizations include making a profit from the endeavor and keeping the project and other parts of the organization running smoothly. Organizations quite often undertake projects for their own purposes. Developing a new car model, for example, is a rather large project conducted periodically by automobile companies. Opening new markets (like John is helping to do), developing new products and services, conducting comprehensive studies of some aspect of an organization, and designing and leading organizational change are other common examples of projects conducted by organizations for their own benefit.3 When organizations embark on such endeavors, project leaders are dealing with a stakeholder who is a client as well as the host organization and must address both sets of stakeholder needs at the same time. The Project Team The project team—the group of people who actually carry out project activities—is a critical stakeholder of any project, and the project leader will do well to look out for its interests even before it is assembled. Although project teams have many interests, an overriding one is simply to be able to do the project given the time and cost constraints and the products and services to be delivered. Other key interests are to have a smoothly running project with minimum disruption from changes and having the resources to do the job when they are needed. End Users End users are those ultimately intended to use or benefit from a project. Their interests focus on the utility of what is produced for them. The end users of the Baltimore Project, for example, are the intended customers of the Baltimore store. The gala opening will be successful only to the extent that potential customers are attracted to it. This, in turn, affects decisions about what kinds of advertising to use and the promotional incentives offered. Suppliers Projects often need suppliers to deliver the products and services that the team itself cannot supply. Many of these are provided by suppliers outside the host organization also called vendors, sellers, and subcontractors. The primary interest of outside suppliers is to increase their revenues by servicing the project. Often, their interests focus more on revenues than on other issues important to the project. Projects may also have internal suppliers within the host organization, however, who are called upon to help supply information, personnel, space, equipment, and the like. Quite often, the costs of these resources are not reimbursed. As one might imagine, this can set up a supplier-project relationship far different from one in which an outside supplier is paid for products and services. At the very least, project leaders need to be sensitive to the fact that supplies provided to the project often come at a cost to the internal supplier. Dealing with Stakeholders We have identified a number of stakeholder categories and will explore them and others much more in Chapter 7 as well as how best to work with them. For now, however, project leaders should remember that when they are dealing with stakeholders, they need to carefully consider their interests and concerns. In addition, leaders need to be aware of who are the key stakeholders for their projects. Key stakeholders are those who have the power and authority to make important decisions about the conduct and outcomes of the project. Although all stakeholders should command attention and respect, key stakeholders require extra time and attention. As project leaders work through their mission statements and progress through the scoping of a project, they need to keep the principal stakeholders of the project in mind. These stakeholders often have conflicting interests that must be reconciled for the project to be a success. Although always a challenge, addressing those interests is far easier to do earlier in the project than later.