Spending time at the start of a project to ensure all detail is captured and planned is crucial. Projects tend to fail because they are poorly planned. Spending time at the very beginning and running through the processes will minimise the risk of something being missed. A project manager is only a facilitator of the activities so needs to engage the experts to understand and define all the activities in a plan. 

As a business grows and more customers come on board time should be taken to understand what the journey your customers experience is like. What are the challenges they have in finding your service/product and could they be improved? This is where Customer Journey Mapping comes in.