Have you ever worked with a project manager who not only kept your project on track, but also made the experience a positive one? While some may think of project managers as the taskmaster who keeps everyone in line and the project on schedule, the project manager can actually play a valuable role when it comes to delivering a positive client experience.
Over the past year and a half, the majority of businesses have had to pivot in some way, whether by putting systems in place for employees to work from home, accelerating digital transformation efforts, reprioritizing projects, or navigating around resource constraints. A positive customer experience has always been important, but now it’s a key differentiator in a world where change and unpredictability have become the norm rather than the exception.
Ready to up your game? Below are five things you can do to not only get the job done, but also help the client have a great experience while doing it.
1. Prep agendas, team members, and clients ahead of time.
We were busy before the pandemic, but it seems like we’re all even busier now. And busy people in particular (and everyone in general) always appreciate when they know what’s going to be discussed during a meeting and what their expected contribution will be. It also makes for a more productive use of everyone’s time.
We’ve all been in meetings where some people don’t say a word. If I invite people to a meeting and they don’t participate, I take that as a sign I didn’t do a good job tailoring the agenda and preparing them to participate. Providing an agenda and setting expectations gives attendees more time to prepare, which encourages their participation, makes everyone more invested in the outcome, and minimizes wasting people’s valuable time. All of which provides clearer guidance for the project so you can deliver exactly what the client wants.
2. Be prepared to tailor the management of the project to suit the needs of the client.
Waterfall used to be the methodology of choice for both project management and software development, but project managers now have more options when it comes to how they manage client projects. Agile took the software development world by storm back in 2001, and it’s recently gained some serious traction in project management. It makes sense: the exponential increase in MarTech over the past decade has made these types of projects much more complex. Not to mention that project managers have had to become even more flexible and adaptable to changing priorities, requirements, and resource constraints over the past 18 months as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
When a project has a concrete, universally agreed-upon outcome, I typically default to a waterfall approach. Everyone knows exactly where they want to go, how much time it will take, and what the budget is — and shall remain — for the duration of the project. You can fully determine project requirements at the start of the project, and complete each deliverable sequentially. If requirements are difficult to capture, however, or any of the other typical constraints like time and budget are open for discussion, running the project in Agile or even taking a hybrid approach may make more sense. This iterative approach provides flexibility so you can adjust as you go instead of following a linear path.
3. Think about the visuals you are preparing through the lens of your client.
Always take your audience into account when creating and sharing visuals like the project plan and project dashboard. Are you providing too much or too little information? Are you presenting it in a way that is easy to digest and share? Someone who is involved in discovery, like an end user, may want to see a day-to-day plan for the next six months, and walk through it with you — in detail — once a week. Executive sponsors will likely want a bird’s-eye view that includes things like when the project will be finished and what they can expect to see once it’s live.
We use Smartsheet here at BDO Digital, and it has a dashboarding tool that I absolutely love. We can take a detailed project plan (which can be more than 200 lines long, depending on the project) and consolidate it into a single-screen view with the click of a button. Those who only need a “project at a glance view” can see things like percentage of project complete, what’s coming up in the next few weeks, and key stakeholders — without getting into the micro-level detail the project manager needs to keep everything moving forward.
4. Sharpen your active listening and requirements capture skills.
When it comes to capturing requirements, it’s worth taking the time to refresh your skills regularly. Requirements capture — which includes both desired functionality along with undesirable or out-of-scope activity — is an art that makes a project manager worth their weight in gold. It’s important to document everything in detail for future reference. If someone comes in late in the game, for example, and asks why you’re not including X, you can refer back to this document and explain why the decision was made not to include it in the scope of the project.
Requirements capture is 90 percent active listening, which includes reading between the lines for things the client doesn’t always express. You want to be clear about what you are doing and what you aren’t doing (and why), so everyone is on the same page and has the same expectations for the final outcome. Never assume that because the client didn’t mention something that’s commonly associated with their type of project that they don’t want it. They may not realize it even exists. These are the things that can pop up during the middle of the project and leave clients disappointed that it won’t be part of the final deliverable (or, it becomes scope creep, which will increase the budget and schedule, which can also leave the client feeling disappointed even if they do get the functionality). Taking the time to do this right, at the very beginning of the project, can help improve the client experience regardless of what makes it into the final requirements.
5. Think operationally.
Does a certain engagement stand out as “best in class?” Thinking about how to capitalize on lessons learned and operationalize what went right so that it can be repeated will help save time, efficiency, and your sanity the next time you manage a project. By the same token, what didn’t go right? Could discovery have gone more smoothly? Did your client have questions that your project plan and dashboards could have done a better job of answering? What can you do on future projects to mitigate any potential roadblocks or setbacks?
Sometimes, though, it just seems like the planets magically aligned and you can’t quite put your finger on how to replicate it. About a year ago, I worked on a project where everything went right. From our very first discussion, the client was very clear on their expectations and we were able to implement those expectations to the letter. Discovery was smooth, there were no disagreements, and the implementation was seamless. We finished on time and on budget. When I looked back for lessons learned, nothing out of the ordinary jumped out at me at the time. Was this just a particularly easy client? Did a well-written SOW make all the difference? For whatever reason, everything just came together. I’ve tried to replicate our success on projects since then, but sometimes you just have to take the win.
While many companies have made the customer experience a priority for years now, it’s become a business imperative across the enterprise. Customers had to change the way they work (and where they work), and they also have higher expectations for how their products and services are delivered. A positive customer experience is also a beacon of hope and light in an otherwise unpredictable and socially distanced world. As a project manager, I’m happy to do my part in shining that light a little brighter.
Ryan Boone is a Senior Project Manager and certified Project Management Professional (PMP) supporting BDO Digital’s Demand Generation Group. He received his Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Colorado State University and a Master of Business Administration with a focus on Project Management from Louisiana State University. Since starting his career in Project Management at IBM, Ryan has overseen a wide variety of projects, including large-scale implementations, and prides himself on developing and sustaining cooperative and healthy working relationships.
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