Psychotherapy tells you what you already knew: all your current problems are the result of your troubled childhood. You are now harassing your employees, because in high school the popular boys always bullied you. Your children wonder why you always provide them these trivial and obvious advises (actually, this is their problem, not yours). For the answer they should ask grandma how she succeeded so perfectly with her brainwashing their father/mother. You see, current problems find their origin in history.

By now, you know that I will make the bridge to software projects at this moment… so, yes, the same holds for software projects. This financial geezer sits on top of the budget (current problem) because the last project he controlled went way over the price (history). When we later on handle the subject of requirements determination you will see that most requests from users are caused by problems in their current systems. If they keep on emphasizing that new billing-system X should have perform check Y, you can bet your money on it in their current situation the lack of check Y is causing them a lot of extra work.

You could ask every stakeholder "Where were you on the night of…?", but something tells me this kind of McCarthyism is not beneficial for your start at the project. The most effective way is to have an informal talk with a senior and relaxed employee of the firm, who knows most of the important stakeholders and has been around in the organisation. Talk about the financial people, the bosses, the maintainers, the user groups and especially their managers. Where do they come from? Were they around last time a project was conducted? How did that come out?

Another way to get some taste of the history is to review old documents. Project plans, evaluations, strategic memo's, everything that is available and is somehow related, could be of use to build a view on the past.

Of course, if you are the senior and relaxed geezer of the organization, you already know its history. In this case, just refresh clearly your memory.