These are some questions to get you started on an interview guide for the project sponsor. The goal here is to introduce the team, find out what the sponsor wants and how they think we can help.
Example:
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What is the overall purpose of this project? What problem are you trying to resolve or address? What need are you trying to address or satisfy? Usually aimed at achieving some significant improvement (efficiency, effectiveness, flexibility, innovation, timeliness, quality, service) or achieving compliance.
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What is the primary business objective driving this project? How will that objective be measured?
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How how are things currently working? How would customers describe things? What would your managers say? Are there areas that clearly need improvement? What would be the main characteristics of an improved process?
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Are there issues or constraints we should know about? Have any significant issues or difficulties arisen, such as conflict, a policy decision required or a technical difficulty? Are there any constraints we need to take into account such as deadlines, regulations, security, audit, control, and resources? Have any important decisions already been made?
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Have you tried to solve this before? If so, why didn’t it succeed the first time? Is there existing material we can use or should be aware of? Are there other initiatives that might affect this one?
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What is the relative priority of this project compared to other initiatives?
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When (and how) will we kick off this engagement? Who is the core team on this project? What do we need to know about them?
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Who should we talk to? Discuss which stakeholders, subject matter experts, and representative users should be interviewed in order to give the team insight into the current situation. Work out who will send out the request for participation. For stakeholders and subject matter experts, it will likely be the project sponsor that identifies specific people, contacts them directly about the project and communicates why we’d like to talk to them. For end users, the project sponsor can help identify the different user groups and how to recruit them. Decide whether any of this user/stakeholder outreach can happen prior to the kickoff meeting, because participant recruitment always takes way longer than you'd expect. Make sure the project sponsor understands how critical these interviews are. Aim for doing interviews during the first two weeks of the engagement.
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Do you have any advice for us on how to succeed? What would we have to do for this project to be a success? Are there things that would substantially increase the chances of failure?