Initiation phase

Importance of the phase

Initiation is an essential phase that will largely determine the rest of the project. This phase will be decisive for the successful implementation of democratic dialogue throughout the entire project. Democratic dialogue must be conducted throughout all this phase.

Please note: in some cases (particularly agile approaches), this stage may be greatly reduced. From a democratic dialogue perspective, it is desirable that it be carried out in its entirety.

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Standard presentation of the phase

APIDOR’s advice

Initiation is the most strategic phase of an IT project.

Note: in certain specific cases (particularly when using an agile approach), the Initiation phase can be greatly reduced. However, once a project reaches a certain size, this crucial phase must be carried out in full.

Other names: project initialisation/launch, preliminary study, feasibility study, architectural vision¹, etc.

Reminder: new paradigm to promote

Democratic dialogue is a factor in the success of IT projects.

Point to watch: process re-engineering?

Be careful with software projects that will support process re-engineering. The definition of new work processes must involve democratic dialogue.

Phase objectives

Verify the project’s feasibility.
Set the project’s objectives and scope.
Determine the list of stakeholders and their roles.
Provide a functional overview of the domain and its relationships with other domains, identify the scope impacted by the project.
Define functional and non-functional needs/requirements (at a level that can still be fairly general), identify architectural constraints.
Build a macro view of the initial architecture and the target architecture.
Make structural choices: evaluate the investment (time, human and technical resources), analyse the risks associated with ‘doing’ and those associated with ‘not doing’ (and possible plans to reduce them), set a timeframe for the project.
Define an initial composition of the committees, in terms of the roles, profiles and specialities required (even if it is not yet possible to put all the names in place).
Draw up a project glossary with each term defined unambiguously according to the different contexts, in particular those used to describe requirements².
Define a baseline for the rest of the project: the Initiation document (end of phase) is a form of ‘specifications’ for the next phase.

Elements that absolutely require clarification

If the aims and objectives of the IT project are based on the organisation’s values, the definitions of these values must be known and accepted by all stakeholders.

Point to note

If the aims and objectives of the IT project are likely to change the organisation’s values, the issue must be addressed during the democratic dialogue.

Point to note

One of the project’s objectives must be to ensure that the application developed does not generate social debt.

Point to note: risks to working conditions

Risks related to well-being and citizenship at work must be included in the risks to be assessed and addressed.

Democratic dialogue procedures

The principle of representing the bearers of the need for well-being and citizenship at work in various committees must be formalised.

Point to note: project glossary

In the project glossary, particular attention must be paid to the definitions of terms expressing values and indicators.

Note: challenges for senior management

For top management, the challenges associated with the project generally relate to:

Aligning the project with strategic objectives, e.g. increasing the customer base, entering a new market, etc.
Aligning the project with key management decisions, e.g. reducing costs, outsourcing, mitigating risks, etc.

These challenges must be reflected in the project requirements.

New paradigm to promote

Democratic dialogue can become a key issue for senior management, and therefore a project management requirement that will be driven by them.

Elements that absolutely must be clarified

The strategic issues on which the project is aligned must be explicit and known to all project stakeholders.

Phase inputs and outputs

Inputs

As Initiation is the first phase of the project, the phase input can be very brief: a project title, a few lines of text, or sometimes (rarely) just an idea.

Outputs

Initiation note (or file).
Other names: engagement letter, summary note, launch note…

Typically, the document provides answers to the 5W1Hquestions (Who, What, Where, When, Why, How)³:

W – What: project content, scope

W – Who: project stakeholders (business project owner, project owner, project manager, key users, etc.), impacted parties

W – Where: location(s) of implementation and deployment

W – When: schedule, key dates (including the desired project end date), frequency of various types of meetings

W – Why: project objectives and existing context

H – How: in terms of methods, resources, budget, etc. (but this does not yet involve defining how the need will be met technically)

Elements that absolutely require clarification

The introduction to the Initiation phase should not be too brief.

The reasons for launching the project and its objectives must be clearly stated.

Reminder: the way in which the problem or challenge that the project is supposed to address is formulated will have a significant impact on the type of solution chosen.

Points for discussion

The project’s objectives must therefore be sufficiently clear and open to discussion at the start of the Initiation phase.

Information to be received

It is important to know whether the IT project is the result of pressure from the organisation’s environment. If so, does it seek to respond to this pressure through simple adaptation? Or, conversely, is one of its objectives to increase the organisation’s resilience and autonomy vis-à-vis its environment (suppliers, customers, competitors, banks, etc.)?

Proposals to be made

Democratic dialogue must be recognised in concrete terms as a source of requirements/needs => an initial list of overall needs related to well-being and citizenship at work must be included in the framework document.

Democratic dialogue procedures

Consensus must be sought among all types of project stakeholders on the time frame defined at the outset.
The procedures by which project stakeholders can alert others to the need to modify this timeframe (or modify it themselves) must be defined.

Stakeholders involved

One of the objectives of the Initiation phase is to define the list of stakeholders involved (the ‘WHO?’ of the Initiation note).
To complete this phase, an initial group of people is assembled, mainly consisting of subject matter experts:

the project leader (sponsor): a key stakeholder in the Intiation phase, responsible for the strategic vision and the project’s objectives. They make structural decisions, set objectives, modify the scope of the project, reallocate the budget, etc. They must approve any changes of direction if technical problems arise. They have signing authority for the project (because they have been entrusted with a budget for the project).
Business analysts (either operational staff or business experts).
Project owner (or product owner): lower level than the project leader, but involved throughout the project (attends weekly or even more frequent meetings). They must be familiar with the production system and are an agent of the production system (but may sometimes be a consultant).
Project owner assistant (present 100% of the time): must have business knowledge. They gather the project owner’s requirements to lighten the project owner’s workload. They may be an external consultant (this is often the case).

Note: when defining the list of individuals who will be involved in the project (the ‘WHO?’), negotiations may take place between the project management team and the sponsor in order to avoid certain individuals considered ‘negative’ (having caused too many problems in previous projects).

Democratic dialogue procedures: stakeholders

Stakeholders promoting well-being and citizenship in the workplace must be recognised as integral parts of the project and must participate fully in the Initiation phase.

Reminder: stakeholders in democratic dialogue

Stakeholders involved in requirements relating to well-being and citizenship at work may include: the project owner, the specialised project owner assistant(s), one or more business stakeholders representing users, union representative, etc. (see Stakeholders and bodies).

Content and sequence of the phase

It is important to define the duration of the Initiation phase in advance, scheduling a maximum number of meetings/interviews with the project sponsor/leader during the phase. The Initiation phase could, for example, be set at one month.

Regular meetings must be scheduled in advance (e.g. every Friday at 2 p.m.) to limit absences from meetings and, consequently, delays in decision-making.

The constant participation of the ‘business’ side (interviews to express needs, meetings, validation of intermediate points, etc.) is absolutely essential for this phase.

The phase includes a preliminary study to produce a representation of the domain concerned, enabling a diagnosis (opportunity) to be made and functional and non-functional needs (requirements) to be identified. The study makes it possible to define: a structure for the domain in terms of processes, the choice of a representative subset (RS) in cases where the domain is large, a description of the data, a diagnosis and an initial set of requirements (macro-requirements).

There are no real rules for defining which users will be interviewed. If it is not possible to interview all users and a panel must therefore be defined, the users are chosen from within the business domain. They are business experts.

The search for experts is carried out by the directors (e.g. if a legal expert is needed, the project manager or project owner consults with the legal director).

Note that general functional requirements are often written by the project owner (this is also the case for detailed functional requirements).

The preliminary study also makes it possible to reference elements that have already been created and are useful for the project. For example, there may be detailed specifications (even very partial ones) that can be used.

Traceability is established between the issues and requirements. The latter are prioritised within the framework of urbanisation zones (organisation of functional areas) once these have been defined. The main business processes that will be impacted are identified.

Initial design and organisational work can then be carried out. This should enable one or more solutions to be proposed at the conceptual and organisational levels. This is followed by an assessment of the proposed solution(s) in terms of functional characteristics, quality, cost and deadlines.

However, in some projects, there is not necessarily a solution at this stage (this will be done in the Design & Planning phase).

Note: sometimes the decision to purchase off-the-shelf software (software package) is made during this initial phase.

eOrganisational learning

At the start of the Initiation phase, it is important to identify any formalised collective knowledge from previous projects that could be used.

Point to note: duration of the phase

Pay attention to the duration of the Initiation phase and the frequency of meetings during this phase. All stakeholders, particularly those representing users and affected individuals, must feel that sufficient time has been allocated to the Initiation phase.

As the Initiation phase comes before the others, if it is too short or meetings are too infrequent, this will have a negative impact on the rest of the project and on the quality of democratic dialogue.

Needs/requirements related to well-being and citizenship at work

These requirements may be functional or non-functional.
To identify them, interviews focused on actual work (rather than prescribed tasks) must be conducted by the business stakeholders responsible for well-being and citizenship issues and/or by specialised project management consultants (see Stakeholders and bodies).
An initial list of requirements is provided here.

Reminder: new document to be introduced, the ‘democratic dialogue logbook’

The ‘democratic dialogue logbook’ must be started during the Initiation phase to enable monitoring of the consideration given to the needs identified through democratic dialogue, the difficulties encountered, the trade-offs made, etc.
This logbook promotes organisational learning about democratic dialogue in digital projects.

The ‘democratic dialogue logbook’ from a previous project can provide useful information, including a set of requirements (functional and non-functional) that can be used in the current project.

Point to note: choice of the panel of users interviewed

The choice of the panel of users to be interviewed for the collection of requirements must be agreed between the management of the department concerned and the stakeholders responsible for well-being and citizenship at work.

Point to note: decision to purchase software

If the decision to purchase off-the-shelf software is made during the Initiation phase, there is a risk that the definition of requirements will be heavily influenced, or even guided, by the features available in the market offerings that have been identified (for more information on purchasing software, see Purchasing off-the-shelf software in the Development phase).

Information usually disseminated/processed

Information is disseminated to two types of stakeholders:

Those who need to know.
If democratic dialogue is a real component of the project, the stakeholders involved will be recipients of project information because they will be the source of requirements.
Those who are authorised to know.
Membership of this category must be negotiated at the outset of the project.

The task of informing non-members of the project who will be impacted by the new system falls to the project sponsor and the project owner, who are required to consult and inform their ‘base

Democratic dialogue procedures

The information disseminated must be forwarded to those involved in gathering information on well-being and citizenship needs at work.

Information to be received

All participants in the Initiation phase must be able to consider themselves informed (sufficiently informed).
The availability of information and its comprehensibility to all (possibly after training) must be verified. If this is not the case, the actors involved in the democratic dialogue must be able to request amendments.

Democratic dialogue procedures

The actors responsible for needs related to well-being and citizenship at work must consult and inform the persons concerned (those directly or indirectly impacted by the future software).

Notes & references

TOGAF lexicon (The Open Group Architecture Framework).
https://www.opengroup.org/togaf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Group_Architecture_Framework
See the ‘ubiquitous language’ of domain-driven design (DDD). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain-driven_design
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ws
See, for example, https://itroadgroup.com/en/the-urbanization-of-is-becomes-strategic/