Today, time is everything. As far as project performance is concerned, time has become as important a metric as cost and quality. Time to market. Response time. Upgrade time. Installation time. And to complete a project on time, you have to constantly harness new requests, revisions to specifications, and the inevitable expansion of scope.
What drives time and determines whether or not your clients are satisfied or unsatisfied is how you manage expectations. By expertly setting, managing and adjusting expectations you can virtually ensure deadlines are met and that your customers feel taken care of. Here’s where to start:
Take time with senior management.
Expectations are usually set by senior management, yet senior management often underestimates the scope of what it takes to deliver. So take time to work with them during the planning process. Define and agree on measurable objectives to be achieved. The more those goals are defined, the easier it will be to guide your team to success.
Take time to include everybody.
This is especially critical to IT projects. Get everyone in a room, from the CIO to junior coders, and get input and buy-in on the timelines and expectations. Achieving deadlines and keeping projects on time and on a budget requires commitment from everyone involved. Dialog with your client, management and project teams to engage them in setting expectations and deciding on completion dates.
Take time to set a clearly defined scope.
People will always try to expand the scope, as they get inspired about what can be done. But even minor changes can accumulate and cause scope creep. Once you have created a collaborative dialog with upper management and the team, you should be able to define a scope that everyone will be happy with.
For the inevitable list of enhancements, assign an LOE, ROI and priority level for all project enhancement ideas and have the team review them weekly. This way, you’ll keep your focus and you won’t waste precious development time on projects that don’t contribute to the goals you’ve agreed to.
Take time to identify responsibilities.
When everyone at every level understands how they will contribute to the success of the project, they’ll have a greater understanding of how the pieces fit together and why they are important. Be clear about what you require from team members and executives, including what meetings will be held and their purpose.
One of the most common mistakes in project management is to fail to align people’s expectations and goals and to not communicate them effectively so that everyone moves the project forward towards your desired outcomes. Take the time to communicate throughout the project and you will have much greater success.
