Project Needs assessment and prioritizing the Needs

Depending on the project Time, Cost or Quality might have a higher importance

Needs identification is the first stage of the project life cycle.

During the project needs assessment phase, the needs of all project stakeholders must be clearly defined, with no ambiguity. At this juncture, it is not important to determine whether the project can satisfy all these needs, or to worry about the best approaches to meet them. All we are attempting to do during this stage is to identify the various and often-conflicting expectations of the different stakeholders. When the needs of the project are clearly understood and defined, several benefits can accrue:

•        After organization’s needs and requirements are identified and analyzed, SOW (Statement of Work) can be defined. It will then trigger the initiation of a project. The following items should be included in the SOW document

▫        Summary of Work Requested

▫        Major Deliverables

▫        Major Milestones

•        Project costs include:

▫        Direct , indirect

▫        Fixed, variable

▫        Recurring non-recurring

•        Project cost estimates has great value in project cost management; based on the estimates, everything else can be determined

•        The costliest ways to estimate cost is bottom-up, followed by the definitive method