Getting Resources
The two main resources that you are likely to need to carry out your project are finance and the help and assistance of others. For both of these, it is worth preparing the ground at this very early stage, just to inform people and to see if there are any difficulties.
Finance
Regarding getting finance, there are no standard project guidelines. You will need to make a "business case" for the project and then present that to the appropriate finance people. Your Project Sponsor should be willing to help you with this, and if you also have colleagues or acquaintances in the finance department who can advise you, then sound them out as well.
Assistance from Others
Regarding others from whom you will need help and assistance, it is sensible to start to prepare the ground with them now. In most cases these are likely to be:
1. Professional Specialist Groups - IT, Training, Communications, Procurement, Legal, etc.
The likelihood is that people in these groups would like to help but overloaded with other, possibly more important, priorities. They are also likely to have workloads that fluctuate so that although they will be able to help you in one month, the following month they are full.
This means that to agree to anything they will need to know what you want them to do and when. Which means that usually they will not agree to anything until they see the Project Plan with it's Time Schedule.
At this stage, your main task is to sound them out:
- give them an overview of what the project is about
- indicate the sort of help you are likely to need,
- ask them how you should go about getting their help,
- get a feel for their likely workload
- and ask them for any ideas/thoughts they might have and try to raise their interest in your project.
As a generalisation, most professionals like to work on interesting projects and if you can capture their interest then your task becomes much easier.
2. People in other sections or directorates whose cooperation you might need for a short period.
When projects cross or impact on other directorates or sections, there can be difficulties in gaining assistance or cooperation from them on your project, not because they don't want to cooperate and help but simply because they have other priorities that they feel are more important.
As described above for the professional specialist groups, sound them out but particularly try to assess how your project will fit with their own priorities, projects and plans and try to gain their interest and ideas.