Case Study $3\mathrm{.}1$ Project Initiation for a Large Healthcare Project

An acute$-$care hospital had hired Imran as a project manager to help lead the hospital's digital transformation activities. Imran had significant experience in a variety of sectors including digital health. One of the key learnings Imran had acquired from previous healthcare projects is the need to have key stakeholders participate throughout the entire project. Much of healthcare involves face$-$to$-$face interactions, and Imran knew he would need in$-$person access to his stakeholders and resources. In addition, Imran's digital health experience had taught him that while technology implementation is a key deliverable, success often hinged on understanding roles, people, and their processes. Imran knew he would need to use Lean in combination with project management practices to be successful.

Imran's first order of business was to understand the project vision and mission and what success would look like in the eyes of the executive team. He met with his sponsors to collect this information and document it in an Agile project charter.

As part of his sponsor interactions, Imran also began to document the functions that would be impacted by the project. He documented a first tier of functions and leveraged his sponsors to provide leader names in each of the boxes. The Agile project charter became the basis for his initial meetings with functional leaders.

Imran met with each functional leader to introduce himself and the project.

Imran focused on the project vision, mission, and benefits. He couldn't provide details at such an early stage in the project. His goal was to confirm the functional ownership of each box in the hierarchy as well as any sub$-$functions within the organization and their owners.

Imran's initial hierarchy only contained the high$-$level organization:

Finance

People and

Organizational

Efficiency

Health Information

Management

Quality and

Strategic$$Planning What was the healthcare organization's communication$$culture$?$