400
June 2016
PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
P
roject
M
anagement
Seller/Doer
The definition of project success at this earliest phase of a small
business are defined, as always, by the stakeholders. At this
point the stakeholders consist of the seller/doer and the client.
The item is requested by the client and the seller/doer completes
the work. While the definition of success can surely be more
rigorously defined, at this point it is most often considered
successful if the customer received what they wanted, close to
on time and there was no significant hemorrhaging of cost over
estimate. The project is simply worked at until it is accepted
by the client. Often there are no real specifications beyond
the relay of a simple thought or request. The plan is first time
right but they will do what it takes as many times as it takes.
Without a clearly defined specification to work with, the chance
of a successful project declines dramatically, and that is true
against virtually any criteria.
Because there is such a focus on building a client base, it
is not unusual to see the seller/doer commit to providing the
moon and the stars as a deliverable, regardless of the defined
deliverable. It is also not at all unusual to see many cycles
completed to get the client a product that they are happy
with. Without clear specifications, client satisfaction is a
moving target. As it is the same person that sold the product
that is doing the actual product work, they are motivated to
have that client task them again, they can easily get caught
up in agreeing to anything. This is not a healthy operational
model and generally a poor business model to sustain.
Seller and Doer
As we transition to the seller and doer model, there develops a
small division between the client and the doer. The doer is no
longer the person with the ongoing upfront investment and
ongoing engagement with the client. While certainly invested
in delivering a great project on time and on budget, the doer
can now focus more on the project specifications. There is
a natural tendency for the doer to want to understand and
define more clearly what the product or service expectations
are at the early stages of production. Questions tend to be
elevated a little earlier in the project life cycle. The earliest
forms of performance tracking begin to appear during the
execution of a project versus a 100% retroactive lookback.
There is still a high risk of cycle counts to achieve client
satisfaction as many of the same factors are at play in the
Seller and Doer Model as with the Seller/Doer Model.
Project success tends to follow a similar model to the
Seller/Doer Model. The biggest change we see in this
phase is the motivation to put forth an increased effort in
planning. Planning in virtually any capacity increase the
chance of project success by any evaluation.
Seller and Doer/Project Manager:
With the awareness of project management as a designated
function and the addition of a formal label for that function,
we naturally start to see planning and project controls
taking form. The relevance of having someone to track
budgets against actuals and whether or not it looks like a
project will be completed on time goes a long way towards
raising awareness of project health to stakeholders. It also
helps with driving effort against budget. The determination
of success at this point grows, more categories are evaluated
against, and success criteria is more rigorous.
Seller and Doer and Project Manager
When a business evolves to this point, there is a real
commitment to the idea that a project manager is actually
necessary to a program’s success, and there is a keen
commitment to planning, execution, and control of the
project. The determination of success against the constraints
of scope, time, cost, quality, resources, and approved risk by
this point have evolved to include all of the categories and
the criteria is much more in-depth. It is also being reviewed
through some manner of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
through the project life cycle versus waiting for the project
close phase as a retroactive look back. The expectation is
that if a KPI shows a trend that is off of the plan, then
the project manager will take action to alter that course.
Assertive project management is key in this phase. It is at
this phase that we typically note that the project manager
is aware of project management tools, best practices in
general, and the PMBOK
®
specifically. The stakeholders
can be diverse and numerous. They are likely to determine
success along much more defined and diverse criteria than
we saw with the Seller/Doer Model.
The definition of project success will continue to change with
a business. As the project manager takes a more defined role
with clear expectations, responsibilities, and accountability
regardless of the evolution of a business, the project’s success
criteria for evaluation will be more clearly defined. The
resulting data will be more relevant and useful in the following
phase of analyzing those results to drive process improvement.
Despite its growth, project management remains as much an
art as it is a science. As project managers, if we focus entirely on
the science (the science being all the rigid, precise, and specific
elements), we lose the art. The art is the fluid, highly adaptive
elements, the part that allows us to improvise and compromise.
Likewise, if we focus entirely on the art, we lose the science.
Neither of these result in optimally managed projects.
