Initiating the project is a crucial part of the project and the hardest step in initiating the project is the business and market research. I think that these two factors are the hardest because you need to make sure that you have solid research in both areas for your project to receive the go head. These two factors of business opportunity and your target market influence whether or not your product will pass the initiation step because if there is little monetary opportunity/the target market is not sufficient then it is not likely that the project will receive the clearance to advance. Moreover another hurdle for project initiation is creating the broad picture for the project and as bb254 indicated the importance of setting milestones.