Call all PMs - The Project Butler is ready to help you create meaningful project schedules for your project.  By taking you through it's automated Q & A process,  you can get approximately 80% of your project plan created for you.  But if you don't learn about it, you'll never take advantage of it.  The third and final scheduled webinar for this new product is scheduled for 4/9/12 at 10am PDT.  I've taken it - and it's definitely worth the one hour of your time.  It's free AND you'll earn 1 PDU for your time.  Sign up here to sit in on this excellent session.

Recently I was brought in to manage a data warehouse IT project for a global software giant (name withheld to protect the innocent…and my client).  I did the usual stuff since the project had already been somewhat defined…I grabbed the statement of work and any pre-engagement documentation I could find, I talked to some of the stakeholders, got an idea of the resources I’d be working with, was able to get my hands on the estimate (hours and dollars) for the project, and then sat down with my project scheduling tool of choice.  And I sat.  And I sat.  Where to start?  I hadn’t managed a project just like this ever.  And I hadn’t managed a project somewhat like this in a while.  I hate this part…building the schedule from scratch or taking a recent schedule and starting from there only to dismantle it and end up with something far different…but still maybe not right.  If only there was an interactive tool that could help me build a good schedule from the start that I could then tweak along the way.  You know, something that would get me 80% there….and I do the rest.

Good news…there actually is such a product.  It’s called The Project Butler.  Designed and developed by adaQuest, this tool uses some interactive Q & A to get you on the path to a great project schedule.  It will use the answers you give to build a framework of pre-defined tasks into your schedule.  After a few minutes of interacting with the tool, you have a workable project schedule that is nearly complete – you put the finishing touches on it and you’re ready to kick off the project.  No more headaches, no more wondering where to start, no more frustrations during the first month of the project as you work and re-work the schedule to get it to where you want it.

Don’t take my word for it…adaQuest is offering a free webinar on this new product on three different dates.  It’s only one hour and it will be well worth your time to check it out.  Times are 10-11am PDT on 3/26/12, 4/2/12, and 4/9/12.  Go here to sign up for one of the three sessions…you won’t be sorry.

To me, the customer relations aspect of project management and consulting is a top priority.  I goes right along with effective and efficient communication as the most important acts that the project manager or consultant must carryout throughout the engagement. 

I pride myself on excellence in the customer relationship area of project management.  I certainly don't do all things perfectly.  Far from it.  But when it comes to managing the customer, interfacing with the customer, understanding their needs, and doing whatever I can to meet those needs, I believe I am always giving 110%.  I may not be always getting it exactly right, but I know I’m always trying - and generally, I see that reflected in the feedback I get from my customers.

That doesn't mean that every engagement goes well.... and it certainly doesn't mean that every customer is happy with me and that none have complained.  They have...and I do tend to take it personally because of the way I always try to approach the customer.

If you find yourself on this situation or if customer relations are not your forte, what do you do to try to mend a strained relationship with a customer?  Something has to be done obviously or the customer's frustration level and dissatisfaction will likely only mount.  Soon you may be shown the door on the project and even with your company if the customer starts calling your CEO....and some customers just may do that.

Let’s lay this out again – you’re project is having issues or you’re having customer issues and you have a strained relationship with the customer.  The project may not be on the verge of collapse, but your relationship with the customer definitely is.  What do you do?  How do you get back to a reset point with them?  How do you win them back over to your side?  Based on my own knowledge of managing customers, as well as any difficulties I’ve encountered with customers and discussions I’ve had with other project managers with troubled customer relationships, I’ve narrowed the actionable responses to these three:

Have a frank discussion with the customer

I’m a firm believer that the best thing you can do is go directly to the offended or dissatisfied party.  It’s your best chance to get real, solid information on what’s wrong with the situation without running through any he said, she said scenarios.  Go in with a few questions in mind…

• What is your opinion of the status of the project?
• How do you feel about the way the project is being managed?
• Are there issues or concerns that you feel aren’t being adequately addressed?
• Are there members of the project team that are specifically causing you concern and why?

After you get some real answers to those questions, take it from there.  Project managers are creative problems solvers – you should be able to unearth some information from one or more of these questions or similar questions.

Involve your senior management

If you feel like you can’t make any discussion progress with the customer, take the leap and sit down with them and someone from your senior management.  Do it before they sit down with your senior management by themselves.  Take the initiative to schedule this meeting so that you are on the inside of the information-sharing process … not on the outside looking in.  Ideally, this will be a PMO director or even a CEO depending on the size of your organization and the visibility of the project (or the whininess of the customer – that’s sometimes a factor!).

Formally present a new course of action

If you feel like you can make some progress with this customer and if you think (or know) that some of their discomfort is due to their interpretation of how the project has been run, then by all means set up a reset point meeting.  Gather all critical parties and take it back to a kickoff meeting type discussion.  Review – or revise – how things are going to be done on the project.  How project status will be reported going forward.  How financials will be managed and reported.  How issues and risks will be managed, assigned, and worked.  How meetings will be led and what will be covered.  Do everything you can to get that customer back to the point where they are comfortable that everything on the project is under control – your control – and that their needs will be addressed.

Summary

No matter what, the customer is unhappy and you have to do something.  It may not even be your fault, but you can’t get past it with the customer until you resolve it.  So resolve it in any way you can.  And, in the end, if none of these three steps do the job – whether they are taken individually or stacked on top of each other – you may have face the reality that some other project manager needs to be at the helm of this project and manage this particular customer.  Most situations can be turned around – but some simply can’t be.

One key thing that any project manager or consultant can do to help ensure good customer relations is to provide an accurate project schedule at the beginning of the project and throughout.  One great product that can help you get there is The Project Butler from adaQuest.  Through a Q&A type situation, The Project Butler will help the project manager build a more accurate schedule so that he can kick the project off right.  For more information, signup for one of these free hour-long upcoming webinars…

Mon, Mar 26, 2012 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM PDT.

Mon, April 2, 2012 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM PDT.

Mon, April 9, 2012 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM PDT.

If you could build a project schedule up front from scratch that was right for your project, you would want to do that, wouldn’t you?  I know I would.  Usually I take an existing template and force my new project to fit into it.  What I’m left with is a project schedule that needs constant tweaking and revisions for the first few weeks as I become more aware of the garbage I left in it from the last project that doesn’t apply to this project.

Starting out with a more meaningful project plan from the outset means you assign real, meaningful tasks to your team at the beginning of the project instead of handing them tasks that aren’t really applicable this time around – they’re just still in the schedule because you neglected to remove those old tasks that really don’t apply.  Same goes for tasks you’ve assigned to the unsuspecting customer.  And what you’ve now done is confused your team and your customer and left them less than confident in your ability to fully understand this project’s tasks and lead them on a successful engagement.  Ouch!

There is a webinar coming up later this month that we should all think about signing up for.  The Project Butler is a new, interactive product from adaQuest that helps walk the project manager – and team if applicable – through the process of creating a meaningful and accurate project schedule – FOR THE CURRENT PROJECT - at the outset.  And it’s all done through a series of questions and answers.  You answer the questions about your specific project and let The Project Butler build the right task structure into the project schedule for you.  Period.  Easy.  Accurate. 

Go to the adaQuest webinar site to signup – it’s one hour, it’s free, and it’s scheduled for Monday, March 26th at 10:00am PDT.  

There is a webinar coming up later this month that every PM should put on their calendars.  Have you ever wished there were a way to build most of your project schedule out based on what you know about the project at hand?  And I don’t mean starting from scratch.  That’s a pain and none of us like to do that.  I almost never do that and I’m betting that most of my readers are like that, too.

My habit is to pull out my last schedule – or some schedule that is vaguely similar to my new project – and use it as a starting point.  That works…sort of.  It may get you 25% of the way there…or maybe even 50% of the way there if you’re lucky.  Well, now we have a better option – The Project Butler from adaQuest.

The concept beyond The Project Butler seems easy enough – you’ll wish you thought of it yourself.  Basically, The Project Butler is an application that lets users answer questions which are linked to groups of tasks.  The end result is a mostly built project schedule ready for you to tweak and finalize to use on your project.  You won’t be left 25% of the way there, or 50% of the way there…this tool will get you 80-90% of the way to a final, ready-to-use project schedule.

The questions The Project Butler asks you can have Yes/No answers or can have answers based on a custom choice list of valid answers.  Some questions may even be free text.  All answers become attributes associated to the project schedule at the project level.

Each answer and question match may “trigger” a set of tasks to be added to the project schedule.  Task lists are actually stored in SharePoint task lists and are intended to be small sets of tasks that represent the best practice way to support the question and answer in the project schedule.  Yes, the tool actually asks you questions and walks you through the process of building the right schedule with relevant tasks to your current project.

Sign up for the March 26th webinar here.  It’s one hour, it’s free, and it may save you lots of headaches and make you look like a genius at the same time. 

How many times have you sat down at your computer ready to start a project and drawn a blank as to where to start with your project schedule?  Most of us just grab our last project schedule and start stripping stuff out if it, right?  Or perhaps you have that one ‘go-to’ schedule from that great project you ran way back when and since it went so well you use that one as a template over and over and over again even if it isn’t even close to the same type of project.  Sound familiar?

Think about it.  What if you could just answer a series of questions and let an application build most of your project schedule for you?  Think of Turbo Tax walking you through the process of completing your taxes.  Yes, there are a few of us stubborn ones out there who still just want to do it ourselves.  But even I succumbed to the ease of being led by the hand last tax season.  Now, if you could apply that process to building most of your project schedule for each upcoming project, would you?  Just answer a series of questions and Project Butler can put most of your schedule together.  Yes, it’s that easy.

adaQuest is offering a very informative webinar on this new product.  I’m just a project manager – like many of the rest of you.  But this product has me excited because I think it’s going to fill a void – a huge void – in the PM workspace somewhere between uncertainty and overconfidence.  And isn’t any automated process that can get you 80% of the way to a real, usable project schedule a good thing?  Sign up for the March 26th webinar here.  I’m headed there now.