Ha posted recently about personal responsibilities and projects. The short summary is that only working within project agreements sometimes is not enough, because the end result might not be to the satisfaction of the clients management, and the personal responsibilities people need to take in not accepting that.
From a project management perspective that is discussable. Sure you need to keep in mind to work towards the business case. But in the end within a project if the clients responsible persons accept additional risks, changes in deliverables, etc there is nothing wrong from the projects point of view. He is responsible internally for discussing if the changes are still within boundaries to satisfy the business case, and react on that within the project. If this leads to problems later you get in the difficult discussion that the project did not deliver what was expected, but everybody did a good job. I guess that’s a tough discussion.
On the other hand, in a client-supplier relationship you want to be more pro-active in that. But some talks/advises/discussions cannot be done within the normal project flow. But fortunately in a client-supplier relationship we also have account management (or program management or other relations). So a level outside of the project that has contact with a client level of people also outside the project, that can make decision on the project.
In Ha’s example I think the project agreements should be hold, until on the higher level decisions are made otherwise, meaning the project definition is updated. The personal responsibilities here are on communicating well enough with colleagues (project management, account management, etc), so the complete supplier organisation can advise the complete client organisation, on multiple levels and in ways suited to the level. In the end everybody from the supplier should work as a team, to be able to give the client as much value for money as possible, under changing situations. This is the added value for the client compared to only following project agreements.
Filed under: Componence, Project Management | Tagged: project organisation, team work
Mainly discussing your 2nd paragraph:
I think (and this is probably debatable) that a waterfall model aiming to always satisfying the client and having no problem deviating from the original scope is exposed to high risks.
Probably the best way, if client involvement is required at all stages, is to go Agile, this way the client will see the project evolving and will be able to modify it exactly to the needs of its organization.
Well… I agree changing the scope brings along risks. But in this example the scope of the project is not fixed, time and budget are. So all changes are downgrading the scope. As I see it we should absolutely advise within the project on the results of (possible decisions) and how to give as much value for money as possible. But if (maybe against advise) a decision is made by the projects responsible person, and it does fit the projects agreements… then what? I would say stick to it. And if you don’t agree, discuss it on another level (i.e. account management).
Is anyone in the world still using Waterfall? ))) Pity for those people.
Agile is already NATURAL. It’s a standard.
In personally think that as professionals we should keep a few simple concepts:
- the client must be satisfied at the end
- we must advise the client as well as possible as we are also affected by the endresult of the client
- we must work as a team, the whole team
- We must try to keep control.
And at Component seniors should always understand that we need to make sure that our juniors are given tasks that they really can do. Juniors are often very optimistic, something that heeds to be managed. Without our juniors our business case is no longer valid.
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