Stop Wasting the First Month of Every Project
You know that feeling. The project kicks off with energy and optimism. Three weeks later, you realize half the team thought you were building something else entirely. The deadline your client mentioned "casually" turns out to be non-negotiable. And that regulatory requirement? Nobody mentioned it until now.
Welcome to the most expensive problem in project work: misalignment.
The Project Canvas aim is to prevent this. One page. One to two hours workshop. Everyone is on the same page—literally.
Why Projects Fall Apart Early
At the start of any project, you by very definition know the least. That's precisely when critical assumptions go unspoken and expectations diverge.
Here's what typically happens:
People stay silent. Your colleagues see a technical risk but assume someone else will raise it. Your client/stakeholder has a firm deadline in mind but figures it's obvious. The finance person knows the budget is tight but doesn't want to be "negative."
Documents may create false confidence. By the time requirements are written up and polished, they look complete. Everyone nods along. But polished doesn't mean aligned—it often just means the gaps are hidden.
You jump straight to solutions. It's human nature. Someone says "we need a new website" and within minutes you're discussing fonts and features. But do you actually understand why they need it? What problem it solves? How they'll measure success?
The Project Canvas forces these conversations to happen before they become expensive surprises.
What Is the Project Canvas?
It's a single-page visual framework that captures essential aspects about a project:
Who cares about this project and what do they need?
What does success look like and how will we measure it?
What could go wrong?
What do we need to deliver, and what do we need to get there?
Who's doing the work?
You fill it out together, in one session. No lengthy documents. No back-and-forth emails. Just your team, a whiteboard (or shared screen), and honest conversation.
In upcoming articles we will jump into each one of these categories in more detail (as you also should in real projects) but let's ensure we have the high-level perspective to start.
The Elements
Stakeholders
Start here. Always.
Project managers constantly tell me their biggest challenge is managing stakeholder expectations. But you can't manage expectations if you haven't identified who has them.
Brainstorm everyone with a stake in your project—internal and external. The obvious ones (your client, your boss) and the less obvious (the IT team who'll maintain it, the end users who'll complain if it's clunky, the legal department who'll block launch if you missed a compliance requirement).
Write them all down. Make sure everyone on the team knows who they are.
Needs and Pain Points
No project exists in a vacuum. Something triggered it—a frustration, an opportunity, a requirement.
What do your stakeholders actually need? Some needs are obvious: reduce costs, increase revenue, hit a regulatory deadline. But dig deeper:
Emotional needs: "I don't want to worry about this anymore"
Social needs: "We need to be seen as innovative"
Functional needs: "I want this handled automatically so I can focus elsewhere"
Different stakeholders have different needs. Your CFO cares about cost. Your marketing director cares about launch timing. Your users care about ease of use. Map them out—use different colors for different stakeholders if it helps.
Risks
What could derail this project?
In complex work, risks hide in the gaps between people's assumptions. Your designer assumes the client will provide brand assets. Your developer assumes the API documentation is accurate. Your client assumes you've done this exact thing before.
Get people in the room identifying risks together. Technical risks, resource risks, dependency risks, stakeholder risks. The goal isn't to solve them all now—it's to know they exist while you still have time to address them.
Metrics and Success Criteria
How will you know if this project succeeded?
This sounds obvious, but I'm consistently surprised by how often it's unclear. Teams work for months without knowing the specific number they're trying to hit, the exact deadline that matters, or the criteria their stakeholders will use to judge the outcome.
Ask the hard questions:
Is there a specific metric? Which one? What's the target?
Are there milestone dates that cannot move?
Is there an audit, certification, or approval process we need to pass?
What would make stakeholders say "this was worth it"?
What is the desired state and how success looks like?
If people on your team have different answers, you've just discovered a problem—better now than at delivery.
Resources
What do you need to make this happen?
Budget, obviously. But also: tools, licenses, external expertise, access to systems, dedicated time from people who have other responsibilities, physical space, equipment.
Be specific. "We need design support" is vague. "We need 40 hours of senior designer time in weeks 2-4" is actionable.
Never call you colleagues “resources”. Not polite - as a bear minimum.
Deliverables
Now—and only now—talk about what you're actually building. Tangible delivery, not status updates!
Why wait till now? Because deliverables only make sense in context. A "great solution" delivered three weeks after the deadline isn't great. A polished product that solves the wrong problem isn't valuable. Features that ignore key stakeholder needs will face resistance.
When you understand the stakeholders, their needs, the risks, the success criteria, and the resources available, your deliverables conversation becomes sharper. You can push back on scope creep with "that's interesting, but does it serve our success metrics?" You can prioritize ruthlessly.
Team
Who's in this together?
List everyone involved and their roles. This seems simple, but it accomplishes something important: it answers the questions people secretly ask themselves at project kickoff (quite often that is the so called “Forming“ phase ). The success or failure of the project is very much dependant on to what extend people will be able to work as a team.
What's my role here? Who do I go to for decisions? Who else is depending on me? Do we actually have the skills to pull this off?
If filling out this section reveals a skills gap, you've maybe just identified a risk for section three.
How to Use the Canvas
The Kickoff Session
Block 90 minutes. Get the right people in the room—team members and key stakeholders. Work through the canvas together, section by section.
Don't aim for perfection. Aim for shared understanding. Some boxes might have question marks—that's valuable information. You now know what you need to figure out.
Stakeholder Alignment
Here's where the canvas pays for itself in time saved.
Instead of weeks of emails and scattered meetings trying to get stakeholder buy-in, you can run a focused two-hour session: 90 minutes to present and discuss the canvas, 30 minutes for feedback and questions.
Stakeholders can see everything at once. They can point out missing milestones, challenge resource assumptions, flag risks you missed, or confirm that yes, you've understood what they need.
Two hours, conceptual alignment achieved. Compare that to the alternative.
Living Document
The canvas isn't a one-time artifact. Return to it when:
Scope changes are proposed (does this serve our success criteria?)
New risks emerge (add them, assess impact)
Stakeholder priorities shift (update needs, reassess deliverables)
The team changes (update roles, check for skills gaps)
The 85% Solution
Could you add more categories? Sure. Every project is different, and you should adapt the canvas to your context.
But these eight elements cover the vast majority of what causes projects to fail: unclear stakeholders, misunderstood needs, unidentified risks, vague success criteria, missing resources, poorly scoped deliverables, and confused teams.
Get clarity on these, and you're in good shape—not because nothing will change, but because when it does, everyone will understand what's changing and why.
Get Started
Download the Project Canvas template and try it on your next project.
Then let us know how it went. What worked? What would you change? Your feedback helps us make this tool better for everyone.