Project Management - Why It's Hard to Get a Straight Answer

In my experience, there are very few exceptions where everything is so perfectly aligned such that a project goes exactly to plan. Most of the time there are snags, hitches, and heck even getting the project going.

Generally speaking the most difficult problem is getting an answer to simple questions such as "How long will doing X take?", or "When will you have time to work on task Z?", or "What can you commit to delivering within the next phase?"

These are really simple questions. Questions that we pose to our vendors when we go out looking for goods and services for our own personal use. When I want to get answers, I walk into the encounter basically as if I were a customer walking into a store. The party I am questioning is going to deliver goods/services to me for a price which they have all ready charged. Amazingly enough this simple approach works wonders. There are many groups especially in larger organizations that will simply not give an answer. I also address this in the same manner. Often times asking "Can I speak to the person who can give me the answer?" or something similar. After all none of us would walk away from a vendor who gave us an unsatisfactory reply and we would certainly never try to do business with a vendor that gives us so much trouble. 

This viewpoint serves as a great, simple and effective way to manage project relationships even amidst the most political of projects. Money has changed hands so to speak and while projects are killed all the time, getting something delivered to your customers in a satisfying way creates loyalty which carries a lot of weight within most organizations. 

Even though I am simplifying the perspective, simply changing how to frame the relationship is often times a very large hurdle to many. Technical professionals by and large dislike being in the "customer service" business. However in truth they are in the customer service business whether they like it or not since their customers are the ones paying their salaries. This does not mean they should take abuse, but it also means being standoff-ish is equally penalizing. 

Very often it is the case that technical professionals with good interpersonal and communication skills are rare to find and highly sought after. This is because these individuals can get to the hearts of matters and come up with straight answers to questions which is what organizations desperately want.

Comments

[Sameer Shaikh]

I believe this is due to a fact that the Technical people are treated as technical here .. machines in other words. If they are groomed and trained well this answer is not so very difficult to get at. And this is why I think we Make Management better than Sex.

Regards
Sameer Shaikh
http://pm-better-than-sex.blogspot.com
www.twitter.com/sameera_cmc

[Altan Khendup]

Thank you for the comments Sameer. Very interesting blog you have. I look forward to reading more there :)