Overview
Background
Provide any background information relevant to why the project is being undertaken e.g. legislative drivers, business or technology changes etc.
Please quote the Annual Plan (AP) number here if this brief refers to a project included in the Annual Plan.
For more info on the planning process click here.
Scope
Scope describes the boundaries of a project.
This section should define what the project will be responsible for and what it will not be responsible for in the 'Out of Scope' section below.
Out of Scope
Define clear boundaries for the project and specify exclusions to make clear to the project sponsor and team those items that are not included in the project scope.
Objectives and Deliverables
Please copy and paste this table into the project brief:
No. * | Description * | Priority ** | Owner *** |
---|---|---|---|
Obj 1 | Output / Outcome / Benefit / Strategic objective |
MoSCoW or L/M/H |
Who is responsible for realising the objective? |
Del 1 | Product / Package of work | Who is responsible for producing the deliverable? | |
Del 2 | |||
Obj 2 | |||
Del 3 | |||
Del 4 |
* The No. and Description columns are mandatory.
** Please insert an explanation above or below the table of the prioritisation method ('M' in both examples above has different meanings).
*** The Priority and Owner columns are optional.
Clearly state the objectives and deliverables of the project focussing on the business requirements to be addressed.
Objectives should be SMART: -
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Realistic
- Timebound
A clear statement and understanding of the project scope is essential to enable an accurate cost estimate to be prepared and allow informed decisions to be made by the project sponsor and other stakeholders.
Wherever possible separately identify each component of the solution to be delivered by the project. Consider how these components will be tested.
Provide as much relevant information as is available.
Benefits
Benefits information must be provided for all projects.
As far as possible please ensure that benefits are measurable. Provide background information on the reasoning and assumptions used to arrive at the benefit figures e.g. where a time saving has been identified as a benefit, please identify how the £ amount has been calculated and any assumptions made regarding the numbers of people positively impacted etc.
Please also provide details of any intangible benefits, i.e. where there is no associated financial gain, reasoning and associated assumptions.
Where benefits are to be realised after the project completes, please state how benefit realisation will be monitored.
Success Criteria
These are the things on which the overall success of the project will be judged. Consider both the functionality that will be delivered by the project as well as criteria such as the scalability, usability and performance of the solution. Wherever possible state how success will be measured.
It is essential to make sure as far as possible that stakeholders share a common understanding of how they will determine whether this project is successful. Ideally these success criteria should take the form of some clear and definable business objectives. The business objectives define the overarching goals for the project. It doesn’t matter if the project delivers to specification on schedule and budget if its deliverables don’t align with business success.
Some examples are:
- the swimming pool will open to students for start of term 2020/21
- the revised store layout will increase sales by at least 20% in the year following installation
- the new gym will enable PE provision in local primary schools to be increased by 2 hours per week
- the new transport infrastructure will enable a reduction of 40% in town centre car park spaces
- the community centre will achieve at least 80% satisfaction ratings in the annual residents survey
For any new service, including the IT components, typical success criteria may include:
- delivery by a particular date
- delivery within a budget target
- delivery of key functionality required by end users
- % usage in target audience
- target volumes of transactions processed
- realisation of cost savings
- compliance with legislation
- user satisfaction
- achievement of a target service levels such as availability or performance
These goals should lead to specific project success criteria which are measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound i.e. SMART. Where a project has multiple success criteria it will often be useful to prioritise these. Not all of the success criteria can be top priority at all times and the project may need to make trade-off decisions to ensure that the most important success criteria are met.
Project Milestones
This section should be used to capture the project milestones that have been agreed at the planning stage.
Please copy and paste the table of milestones from the Milestones log.