I’ve been working on projects lately supporting clients who are incorporating a cutting edge customer capture software into their tradeshow experience. I was onsite recently getting things setup prior to a critical show for one major customer of that software solution and I noticed a nearby booth being setup for IBM with key words on an overhead banner: build, collaborate, and engage. It was attention getting…that was my first thought. My second thought was that it sort of spells out the whole IT project management process - or at least the critical points – in three key words. I’m jealous – I wish I had thought of them.

Build. Collaborate. Engage. It just kind of says it all. We work with our project customers to understand their requirements thoroughly and document them in detail so that we have a baseline structure to work from and a reference tool to return to as we build out the final end solution for them. We’re building for our customer and need to keep on track with their needs and the needs of their ultimate end users. Solve the right need – rollout the usable solution. Build according to their requirements.

Build, Collaborate, Engage

We collaborate with the customer throughout the engagement and we put forth a collaborative team effort to get to that final successful project deployment. We do that by incorporating efficient and effective communication. We do that by using a collaborative tool like Seavus’ Project Viewer for everyone on the team to use to view the project schedule, provide updates, and just stay well informed on their project tasks in general. We do it to keep the project healthy and moving forward on time and on budget.

And finally, we engage. We engage the customer throughout the project to keep them ‘in the game.’ We want to know what’s important to them and we want them to be part of the process – part of the solution. A well-engaged customer is more likely a happy customer and that’s very good. We want to keep our senior management engaged in our projects to give our projects more visibility – a good thing for us, our careers, our project, and our customer who will enjoy the increased visibility and see themselves as more important to your organization. And we engage our team to keep them informed and make them own the tasks for the project. A well-engaged team is focused on the current project and less distracted by the other tasks and projects they are currently working on because in this day very few of us are only working on one project at a time. Who has that luxury?