So far in this five part series on potential project killers, we've covered two topics:
In this third installment, we’ll discuss the problem of the indecisive project customer. A customer who comes into the project without a clear focus of the requirements of needs of the project will be presenting the project manager and team with an ever-moving target. Let’s examine this in further detail…
The indecisive project customer
An indecisive customer is as bad as an ill-prepared customer. This type of customer may be very difficult - if not impossible – to satisfy. Worse, they may never be satisfied with whatever you provide them with and the sign-off criteria for the project may be so poorly defined that you have trouble ever getting closure on the project deployment.
If you’re running a phased project and they keep moving implementation phases around, that can affect many things on your project over the course of the engagement. It can affect your resource assignments and allocation – thus greatly affecting your project budget and probably the project timeline as well. It can throw off your entire resource planning process.
Also,
Summary
The key is to manage the customer well and keep their expectations…and their changes in check if at all possible. Set expectations at the beginning of the project during formal project kickoff. And if it seems like the customer is not
In Part 4 of this
Choosing the right project management software is crucial for the success of your project.Telerik TeamPulse allows you to expressively define and effectively manage requirements. The product enables you to easily capture ‘user stories’ (high-level informal statements of requirements), associate them to
A Business Solution Designer and IT/PM consultant and author with over 25 years of software development, management, and project management experience leading initiatives in Manufacturing, Government Contracting, Gaming and Hospitality, Retail Operations, Aviation and Airline, Pharmaceutical, Start-ups, Healthcare, Higher Education, Non-profit, High-Tech, Engineering and general IT. Brad is married, a father of 9, and living in sunny Las Vegas, NV.