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Project Assessment Workshop
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The Project Assessment Workshop (PAW) is held early on in the life of a project. Its aim is to refine and flesh out the initial project idea and bring greater clarity and wider ownership to it.
The Project Sponsor and the Project Manager should attend the PAW, but you should also invite anyone who can provide useful input into defining the project including Finance and Senior User if appropriate.
When you are ready to conduct your PAW, it is worth sending the Project Mandate to attendees prior to the meeting so that they have a good idea of what will be discussed.
There should be 4 major outputs from the PAW:
- Project Brief. The first part of the PAW should be to discuss what the project is in more depth and record this as the Project Brief.
- Initial Risk Register. You should start to discuss what the biggest risks are to the project.
- Initial Stakeholder List. You should try and identify who the key stakeholders are in the project so that they can be consulted prior to Review 1
- Project Assessment Matrix. (PAM) After the above discussions, you should be able to come to a decision as to the scope of the project using the Project Assessment Matrix. This will indicate the appropriate Project Manager's Checklist.
The final outcome of the PAW is to decide on the immediate next actions (including production of the first draft of the Business Case) and to put some timescales on them. This removes the risk of the project losing momentum early on.
The next few sections discus these outcomes in more depth. The first of these, the Project Brief, is introduced next.
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