Keys to Project Success

1. Develop Customer Intimacy

A solid relationship with your customer provides for commitment and trust between you. When you build a relationship rather than a contractual arrangement, you create an environment that shows you care about more than just deliverables; you care about their success and the success of the organization.

1. Gain Consensus on the project objectives / Develop a solution oriented perspective

Prior to arrival at a customer location, you should understand how your deliverables fit into the project strategy and how that project ties into the company strategy. Will this project decrease costs? Add revenue? Create operational efficiency? These answers will help you to understand what’s important to the customer. As scope is changed, you are put in a unique situation to question if the new features are still in support of the original objective. If they are not, perhaps they do not fit into the current project.

1. Challenge “the list”

Every manager has a list of items they work on for their peers, subordinates, and managment. This list may gain political capital, fix a nagging production item or simply be a pet project. If the project is fixed fee, these items may not be in support of project objectives and may need to be removed.

1. Give them what they want…plus a little

All deliverables should be your best effort. Giving your customer more than what they asked for in less time than was budgeted shows a high degree of competency and allows you to work on other customer value-add items.

1. Remove constraints

When asked to do something that is outside your comfort zone or seems unrealistic for the time budgeted, think of 3 ways that you could complete the request. Does it require a different tool? Do you need additional resources? Could we delay something else? Customers want to hear why we can do something, not why not. Be creative!

1. Develop in “bite size pieces”

Breakdown each task into smaller pieces. Maintain a list of the pieces and show how they roll up. Maintaining a list and showing a customer the progress give them comfort that progress is being made. Avoid the temptation to break into pieces of less than 4-8 hours.

1. Visualize the task

What separates a LÛCRUM consultant from the rest is our ability to make data MORE meaningful. Our Consultants don’t just discuss ideas, we present them. Create meaningful, visual 1-pagers for your Customers. This shows our approach and allows our Customers to see that we understand their challenge.