The Initiation Phase marks the formal beginning of the project lifecycle. During this phase, an approved idea is transformed into a proposal that defines what you are looking to do, why you want to do it, how you plan to go about it, and rough cost estimates for labor, hardware, and software. A project’s objectives justify its value and outline how the effort will be accomplished. 

A Project Manager may be assigned during this phase to collaborate with the project lead and/or project sponsor in developing initial discovery section of the aggregated project document documentation. Once the required section in the document is completed, the project is tagged to the Joint Project List (JPL) and is sent to the Technical Committee for review of technical sufficiency.  

Upon completion of the Technical Committee review, the project advances to the Planning Phase of the project lifecycle.