One of the principles I try to encourage my folks here at Oxiem to adopt is the concept of 'the persistent why'. It's easy to ask why once. For example, I was working with an SEO client and he informed me that he needed to be ranking for 3 specific keywords. I asked why. He said - they are the most important to my industry. It would have been very easy to stop there and say 'OK, makes sense' but it was more important to discover how he arrived at his conclusion. This is the second why.
Bill: WHY are these keywords important to your industry?
Client: Because this is what my customers search on when looking for my service.
Bill: How do you know that?
Client: Experience
Bill: Excellent - this may save us some learning - what data did you use to arrive at this? We can simply leverage this data instead of going through the exercize all over again.
Client: My gut, and in talking to customers.
Bill: Oh.
This began a long conversation about the importance of real data. I told the client that our research may in fact bear out his assumptions, but without data, we'd be opening ourselves up to much potential wheel-spinning. He did not like this, but in the end it turned out to be VERY beneficial for his success.
The point is, asking the second, third, and beyond whys are what makes us valuable to our clients. Many of them are not accustomed to being asked why, and some even bristle, but ultimately, this is why they hire us.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Lack of Scope - Common Responses
Lack of Scope - a project killer for sure..projects with no finite definition of 'are we there yet?' and clients with little patience for being 'pinned down' to a set of deliverables. You WILL have these clients from time to time, and they are most certainly manageable - in fact they can be quite profitable clients in many cases, they just take a different style of management. In my years of managing technology projects, I've discovered that there are some fairly classifiable reactions to lack of scope.
The responses to lack of scope run a wild arc from doing surprising little for the money to packing so much into a project it becomes unusable. Many experienced firms will see lack of scope as a great money-maker as they will promise little and give even less. The client doesn't know what they need, so they never know if they received any value. If they dare complain to the development firm, they will be met with 'We gave you what we promised'. Note this is a far toss from 'We gave you what you needed'. Inexperienced architects tend to 'overgive' - they feel that if they 'just do more' the client will love the end result. The problem with this thinking is that it's usually NEVER enough of the right stuff and WAY too much of the wrong stuff. The client wants a shopping cart with 'all the bells and whistles' so the provider creates a shopping cart with 30 different kinds of discounting methods, but no wishlist or forward-to-friend functionality, so in the end it's discovered that the client really meant that he wanted more 'social' functionality and less 'pricing' functionality and the client is disappointed. Here it's a case of 'we did our very best' - but we all know that this is a slipperly benchmark at best. The client creates these situations as it's sort of a 'I'll tell you when you guess it' approach to project management, and it can be tricky. These clients aren't evil and they aren't stupid, the're just busy. The good news is that I've discovered something..if you know what you're doing you can usually strike a really nice balance for the client with very little input.
The reason an experienced (and introspective) manager can find the sweet spot so easily is because they have done so damn many of these types of projects (whatever type it is) and they 'just know' what needs to be in there. Also, you learn to read a client, their culture, and past projects they have commissioned and you get a feel for what rings their bell. With the understanding of 'what just works', some knowledge of the clients psyche, and a little patience, you can give the client something that is in their budget, satifies their wish to get some value out of their investment, and most importantly, actually creates a positive result for the client.
The responses to lack of scope run a wild arc from doing surprising little for the money to packing so much into a project it becomes unusable. Many experienced firms will see lack of scope as a great money-maker as they will promise little and give even less. The client doesn't know what they need, so they never know if they received any value. If they dare complain to the development firm, they will be met with 'We gave you what we promised'. Note this is a far toss from 'We gave you what you needed'. Inexperienced architects tend to 'overgive' - they feel that if they 'just do more' the client will love the end result. The problem with this thinking is that it's usually NEVER enough of the right stuff and WAY too much of the wrong stuff. The client wants a shopping cart with 'all the bells and whistles' so the provider creates a shopping cart with 30 different kinds of discounting methods, but no wishlist or forward-to-friend functionality, so in the end it's discovered that the client really meant that he wanted more 'social' functionality and less 'pricing' functionality and the client is disappointed. Here it's a case of 'we did our very best' - but we all know that this is a slipperly benchmark at best. The client creates these situations as it's sort of a 'I'll tell you when you guess it' approach to project management, and it can be tricky. These clients aren't evil and they aren't stupid, the're just busy. The good news is that I've discovered something..if you know what you're doing you can usually strike a really nice balance for the client with very little input.
The reason an experienced (and introspective) manager can find the sweet spot so easily is because they have done so damn many of these types of projects (whatever type it is) and they 'just know' what needs to be in there. Also, you learn to read a client, their culture, and past projects they have commissioned and you get a feel for what rings their bell. With the understanding of 'what just works', some knowledge of the clients psyche, and a little patience, you can give the client something that is in their budget, satifies their wish to get some value out of their investment, and most importantly, actually creates a positive result for the client.
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