Project Management: Limelight on Business Value!!

A famous quote by Warren Buffet says - “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.”

What did this project teach us? :

Post-project reviews are conducted to determine what were the lessons learnt from the project and how we could have done better. The successes and shortcomings are also listed down which would be helpful in future projects. There are surveys circulated with the project stakeholders and key project matrices are evaluated to understand are we meeting customer needs, did we have required participation and so on.

This is the traditional way of evaluating projects in the end and it’s an excellent way of retrospection with the team where we ask various questions to each other and document our findings. This definitely helps in knowing what can change going ahead. And thus it is beneficial for future projects. But have we pondered that what about the current project, can this process be helpful in any manner for the current one? Because there is no way you can go back in time and make changes. And is this method alone giving you the correct value about the project? These questions definitely do bother me when I look at the process from start to end. And at many times people consider this as the only time to assess the project and give feedback on its success or failure.

Oh Yes, another Successful Project! : 

Another important facet linked to this procedure is the measurement of project success. The historical view on this would be ‘meeting the triple constraint’ – budget, scope and time. I am sure most of us have surpassed this definition and expanded our vision to measure the true success. The evolution to this is - to determine value the project delivers to the organization. I recently also read that - The new definition of project success is that a project can exceed its time and cost estimates so long as the client determines that it is successful by whatever criteria they use.

Now, I would like to get to back to where I started this blog with the famous quote by Warren Buffet. So as we understand - a thorough post project review and completing a project within the triple constraint are not the factors to guarantee that the necessary business value will be there at project completion. The correct business value is when the customer feels assured that the product / service is worth paying for. And thus another parameter to add to success would be when desired business value is achieved.

Does your customer feel ‘Engaged’ in the project? :

Let’s now understand what would be an additional way of evaluating our projects and determining the success. There should be continuous reviews throughout the project life cycle with the customers to make sure project value is being met. This is from personal project management experience that having stakeholder meetings at regular planned intervals is extremely beneficial. We have weekly status meetings with the business and IT management and agenda includes –

• Status of project
• Quick preview of selected functionality
• Setting up priorities for upcoming implementations
• Discussing limitations of any kind 
• Brainstorming issues on hand
• Instant feedback on functionalities delivered
• Any other discussions / concerns brought forward 

‘Engagement’ of personnel - who would be determining the true value of project, in the entire life cycle, is the smart way to monitor and make changes on the go. Should customer satisfaction be only obtained by end of project? If we can give benefit to the project or our customer why not give all the while. This is being observed in every walk of our life. I recently visited a luxurious resort for a holiday. On my second day, the general manger came to us and asked how it is going for us in every aspect of our stay. I would say this is definitely a good trend in customer service where they did not wait for us to fill out a feedback survey in the end to fix something in next stay. Why not make current experience better with continuous engagement.

It is observed that in long term projects, statement of work (SOW) is not always well-defined. This less adds more uncertainty in the outcomes of the projects with no guarantee of value at the end.

Who defines value in your project? 

• Sponsors
• Higher management
• Or the person - what value it brings to them

How can managers achieve this value?

• Communication – As I said before customer is part of the project and not an outside on-looker. So remain engaged with continuous reviews.
• Initial goal alignment – The manager can also understand in initial stages that what is project success for them and this would be a good start to along with this vision in mind.
• Lot of Interactions with all stakeholders reduces the risk of any surprises in the end. It keeps all involved and feel important as part of the project. It could be like a mind-set shift for people following the waterfall model or project management standards alone.
• Deliver on promises – Since you are engaging the customer all the while, seeking feedback too, make sure you deliver as promised.
• Focus on Actual Customer too - Focusing on people who getting benefit and recipients of deliverables is also key factor. Customer is someone who is getting the actual deliverable in the end. In some scenarios, the product or service is bought by a party who is not the actual user but they in turn give to third party for use. It is like a company buying a website or web application for their users to use. In such case, the product owner is not the end user.
• Customer Satisfaction Scores – Managers can adapt a scoring mechanism on monthly basis with some basic questions for the customers while the project is on. The questions can be something like – How is the delivery going? Is the project well planned? Any major issues? Etc.

What Project Managers will need?

• Team Education: The team is aware about the process being followed and the value achieved through the same.
• Team Culture: Develop a culture of communication within team too. Enabling them to be positive, focused, communicative with each other, accountable, courageous to take decisions.
• Manage expectations through communication
• Soft skills for the Manager – Being judgmental for situation/person, confidence, emotional intelligence, decisive, strong articulation.
• Team empowerment to satisfy customer - Teams are accountable for project results, quality improvements and on total customer satisfaction. Make your team empowered to do so.

In order to make the customer feel the value of they are paying, keep them engaged. Some might argue that this is possible in Agile Management only. But this can also be laying down agile principles on waterfall methodologies. Customer embedded in project process brings transparency in project, build trust and confidence, customers are educated, limitations are discussed, and issues are agreed.

About Author:

Kruti Gala is a lead consultant in Systems Plus Pvt. Ltd. Within Systems Plus, she actively contributes to the areas of Technology and Information Security. She can be contacted at: kruti.g@spluspl.com