Project management success can mean different things for different people depending on their participation in the project.

For a software developer it could be;

• The on-time delivery of their particular element.
• The delivery of a new piece of functionality that had never been done before.
• The fact that they mentored a junior member of the team for the first time and got a kick out of it.

For the designer it could be;

• Seeing their design coming to fruition.
• That design piece that the customer disagreed with but the designer insisted on being appreciated.
• Just being glad that it’s done and moving onto the next thing!

For the project manager;

• On Time, On Budget,In scope,To Quality.
• Because it was the biggest project they’d ever done and it went well.
• Because their boss gave them a nice bonus .

There are many reasons why any team member can feel satisfied that a project was a success.

But the real test of the successful project to me is whether it answers the simple question;

Did the customer of the project get what they expected out of it?

There is no other more important measure of successful project delivery.

If the end customer is satisfied that;

• Their business case made sense and they are seeing the value.
• The engagement with the project team was a positive experience.
• They would recommend that project team/business again.

Without a positive customer reception of the project after it has been closed off, the project has not been a success.

While a large amount of this is down to the project delivering what was promised against the original business case, very often, the impression of the project manager and the team is just as important.

So when you are considering the success criterion of your next project consider the main question of whether the customer is satisfied with what they received.

If they are, they’ll be back.  If they’re not –they won’t!

What are your thoughts on what makes for project success?

Targets in business are generally financially focused. The number of sales we expect to hit in this quarter. The revenue we expect to make over the next twelve months. The net profit we expect to achieve in the next 6 months. All tangible and all very valuable.

Targets can be more than financial though. Targets apply to every aspect of business as they will directly effect the items above.

For this reason, targets should be something that every member of the organisation should be familiar with and also be encouraged to embrace.

Targets should be applied to every area of the business with a view to how they will impact the headliner targets of revenue, sales and net profit.

Project managers have targets – getting the end result in to time, budget, quality and scope.  They have targets along the way, however, called milestones or phases or work items. These are the smaller pieces of work (targets) that allow them to deliver the bigger target i.e. the end project. The end project then feeds into the company revenue targets. It’s all linked.

What other targets could we look at?

• Customer service – reducing wait times for calls? reducing calls full stop by fixing a problem permanently? reducing time on the phone through automation? … these will impact on that net profit target in the company for sure.
• Reduced sales cycle – how can we sell faster? how can we identify key potential customers more accurately? are the team taking the correct approach?
• Marketing – is the company targeting the right audience to help the sales cycle out? Could the business achieve the same impact by spending less?
• Quality improvement - is there a service or product that we the business is selling that could be improved? By investing X in product improvement would the return be greater?
• Staff training – is there a target in place to have the team trained up on that new process or procedure by a specific date?

These are just some ideas. There are bound to be plenty more in your business. Of course, to understand the targets and set a baseline there must be the necessary measures in place to ensure all the targets are being met.

Here at MyProjectTracker, we have some very specific targets at every level from customer acquisition and retention through to the product development. The measures are in place as well – we need to make sure we’re hitting what we said and to understand why if we don’t!

Do you have targets in place at every level of your business?

Photo: SantaRosa

As someone who has worked in the IT world for most of my adult life, the ease with which IT jargon slips into my customer communications is frustrating.

I constantly have to keep check on how I’m communicating to my customers and ensure it is pitched correctly.

Whatever the situation, I force myself to think of how the customer is understanding what is being delivered to them.

I try to make it real for them and relevant.

I chastise myself mentally if I find myself talking about delivering a business process. Their faces, rightly, say “so what!”

It’s not about the process, it’s about enabling a part of their business to increase productivity 20%. (As an example).

Don’t talk your language, speak theirs.

A project should not only be measured on its outcomes, but also on how it was delivered. The overall goal may be a finished product or service, but along the road to completion, many other deliverables are expected. I believe that communication should not just be an action, but something that a project must deliver.

A consistent and regular approach to communication benefits all. The knowledge that a customer will receive a weekly email updating the status of their project (every week) or that they may raise any concerns at the weekly conference call or fortnightly meeting, instils confidence in all parties involved.

Unfortunately, for a number of projects I’ve been involved in recently, I’ve seen a move towards using technology as the sole means of communication. Technology alone is an insufficient channel of communication. Technology should be utilized to support communication; sending minutes of meetings, updating the team on agreed changes, tracking and versioning documents etc, but it should not be used as the only form of communication.

I know when I was a teenager I had many a conversation with my parents that resulted in the line “it’s not what you said, it’s the way you said it!”. it has been cited that 55% of all communication is nonverbal. If this is true, you can see why email and phone/conference calls are just not as effective as a face-to-face meeting. Pitch, tone, facial expressions and body language can all affect the meaning of the message.

How do your Project Managers communicate with both your customers and team?

We were contacted one afternoon by Des from Contrast to make the decision on the payment solution for MyProjectTracker. Payment Server Provider or Payment Bureau.

Myself and Barney sat down one afternoon to trash out the pro’s and con’s of using a Payment Server Provider (RealEx) or a Payment Bureau (PayPal). To be honest, Barney favoured PayPal and I favoured RealEx.

A well formulated guide that helped us make sense of the online payment choices was www.webpayments.ie. This should really be the first port of call for anyone creating a website that will be required to take payments.

Here is a summary based on our discussion that day and our discussion of this topic with others who have setup website that require payment:

Payment Server Providers: (RealEx)

• Higher quality system
• Better user experience
• No need for customers to visit other website for Credit Card verification
• No additional accounts required for customers
• Better system in the long term
• Tougher to set up with banking in the short term
• It may take a number of weeks to acquire a Merchant ID from the bank
• A Setup fee may be required with the Payment Service Provider

Payment Bureau: (PayPal)

• Messy user experience
• Customers must visit third party website to for Credit Card verification
• Messy administration of account
• Easier to set up in the short term

A number website designers we spoke to seem to seriously regret choosing PayPal as a solution, but their decision was made at the time due to time or financial constraints.

We plan to provide the best customer experience possible for MyProjectTracker customers, and this begins at the door. It’s all about first impressions, and we want a smooth credit transaction to be the start of a long customer relationship.

As we were not under anytime constraint with regards applying for a Merchant ID, we decided to go with the Payment Server Provider solution.

The fact that we had heard good things regarding RealEx’s customer support, we then decided to choose RealEx as our Payment Service Provider.

Did you decide to go down the Payment Service Provider or the Payment Bureau route?
What were the reasons for you decision?

CRM is an important concept for us all and I believe the importance of it has been hidden under a load of jargon placed on it by software suppliers.

Customer Relationship Management a.k.a. CRM as a concept is geared very much towards the larger scale business and is misunderstood or worse, ignored, by smaller enterprises as a consequence. Software companies have made small fortunes creating CRM applications that deliver incredible insights into your customers to help you achieve both loyalty and sales. It is often through the software houses that we hear about the CRM space and what it means to business.

But what is CRM really? Does it apply to smaller companies and do you need software to do it?

In a nutshell, CRM is about finding out more about your customers and to utilise that information in a way to engender loyalty and increased sales. That’s it, nothing more or less.

Does this apply to your business and ours? Yes it certainly does! Every business wants to keep its customers and to increase sales.

This is the point at which people get nervous of CRM concepts as it starts to create thoughts/concepts of “change” and “investment” and “IT” and “time”.

Well it shouldn’t make us nervous and it most certainly doesn’t mean an enormous investment of capital and/or time.

The outputs of effective CRM practices are;

1. Loyalty.
2. Encouraging more sales.

Simply breaking it down to those two phrases certainly makes it easier on the eye as to what you are trying to achieve.
Think about your business – does this mean an expensive investment or is it simply making sure that you look after your customers correctly each time (deliver what you say, when you say and with a friendly face).

This delivers loyalty that will inevitably deliver greater sales as word of mouth is a very powerful tool – especially if you consider the amount of blogs, social networking sites etc on the internet that can be used as “word of mouth vehicles”.
It does not have to mean investing in high-end data mining and CRM analytical tools that are, for the most part, outside of the budget of most of us.

What it does mean is that we look at our operations to ensure they are geared to providing the best possible service to our customers along with the ability to identify and understand their needs.

Where can your operations improve to help better understand your customers needs?