Defining Your Project - Project Planning and Management for Ecological Restoration - page 29

Chapter 3
Defining Your Project
A restoration project commonly begins with a great deal of enthusiasm, high expectations, and a
strong sense of camaraderie among team members—an understandable response to the exciting idea
of restoring the land. However, not long into the process, the team may discover that perhaps they
don't all share the same vision of what needs to be done. A simple project of invasive weed eradication,
for example, may largely avoid this potential conflict, unless the invasives have made significant in-
roads into the plant communities and leaving large open areas of bare land is unacceptable. You have
now entered into the arena of potential conflict due to varying expectations among team members.
Fortunately, the project definition process helps create a common understanding among all
participants in the restoration project. As mentioned in chapter 2, these participants are more than
just the people working on the ground. Collectively, we call the larger group of interested parties
and organizations “stakeholders.” The process of reaching agreement on what is to be accom-
plished results from all participants expressing their individual visions of how to resolve the prob-
lem(s) (chapter 2). All of these points of view are coalesced into a mission statement representing
the consensus of the stakeholders, which is then expanded into a set of project goals. Derived from
these goals are objective statements, which in turn generate specific actions that will be imple-
mented to achieve each project objective.
This step-by-step planning process ultimately results in clarity and consensus. The mission
statement, goals, objectives, and actions serve to define a restoration project. An important func-
tion of having a clear project definition is to prevent straying from the agreed-upon scope of the
project as set forth in the mission statement and established goals. This will help to avoid wasted
efforts or loss of resources and to prevent misunderstandings if some stakeholders show up at the
table late in the planning process.
Restoration project managers understand from the beginning that forces are at work that will
challenge their stated definition of the project. During the project development process, you may
face budget shortfalls, changing project requirements, shifting opinions of project sponsors, and
unforeseen environmental and site conditions (see the list of risks in chapter 2). That is why it is so
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