Like most of us out there, I’ve learned some hard lessons in life through relying on what normally would be common sense or courtesy, only to find that others don’t have the same understanding and they don’t always play by the rules.  Buying a house from unscrupulous realtors during the housing boom in Las Vegas was a learning experience, working in the casino/gaming industry was sort of like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, and customers are not always fully educated on what they want and need AND they’re usually looking out for their own interests first.

I’m not saying customers are bad – not by any means.  But you perceive them to be the experts in what they need and that is often not the case.  All they really truly know for sure is that they have a need – either because they’ve figured that out for themselves or their end users have told them that through feedback or declining sales, etc.  You may also perceive them to be fair, but again, they’re looking out for their own financial needs first and that’s only fair.  But whether you’re an independent consultant going in to run an implementation for a customer or you’re a project manager from a large organization backed by a PMO … either way, don’t think the customer won’t leverage things their way whenever they feel they need to.

What I’m saying is, don’t take anything with the customer for granted.

Don’t assume the customer understands their need

Go into any engagement with the customer with the blinders off.  Ask lots of questions, toss their ‘requirements’ aside or – if they look halfway reasonable – use them as a starting point.  But never – under any circumstances – take customer-provided requirements and run with them without questioning them and drilling down deeper.  It’s your job as the trained professional to ask the tough questions and get to the real issue.  Often, what the customer comes to you with is only a symptom of the real problem.

Let’s say a project sponsor comes to you asking for new reports to be created coming out of their timekeeping system because accounting isn’t getting the information they need to do their job.  If you ask enough questions and talk to the actual end users, you may find that replacing the current timekeeping system with a newer one will give accounting their own interface to get the info they need and allow for future expansion and scalability.  Now you’ve solved today’s AND tomorrow’s problems.

Don’t assume the customer has your back

The customer may be your friend during the engagement and they may be as helpful as you can ever imagine a customer being.  However, if things go wrong, they will cover their own needs.  They will seek to replace team members on your project team by complaining to your senior management.  And they will ‘interpret’ signoffs to work in their favor as much as possible and withhold payments until they are satisfied.

Here I’m referencing the $185k mentioned in the intro article.  We had greatly narrowed the issues list that I had inherited from the outgoing project manager from several dozen to less than ten, but getting that final payment was like pulling teeth.  It didn’t matter that we had a long working relationship with the organization and promised to continue working the issues until they were completed.  Our executive management wanted that payment by the end of the quarter and the customer knew it.  Falling in line and producing formal status reports helped, but it was obvious they were looking out for their needs first and foremost and holding that payment over our heads until the work was finished.  I can’t say that I fully blame them, but their own user acceptance testing was sorely lacking in detail and most of the issues were discovered by my team, not by the customer.  And most had to do with their own internal configuration, not with the software we were delivering.

Summary

Customers are great and without them, we’d have no projects.  But you have to go into an engagement thinking you’re they expert and consider it a learning experience for you that you have to make happen.   You have to ask the right questions and get to the heart of the issue.  And all along, you have to look out for your own interests as well.  Carefully word signoff criteria and be sure to get official signoffs at all major milestones in order to ensure that you get the milestone and deliverable payments that are due to you and/or your organization.