HERE ARE SOME REAL CLIENT STORIES
Story I - Can projects be managed without project managers? Would setting a PMO help?
A medium-sized company was quite successful in the IT market, developing order management systems for telecom clients across North America and Europe. Initially, sales went well, and the company secured contracts with several leading telecom providers. As business grew, they needed to customize features for each client. To improve core development efficiency, they introduced the concept of product releases and began building a release management system.
Soon, however, project management challenges emerged. Developers were working on concurrent implementations for multiple clients, with no defined process. Project scheduling and cost estimates were handled by senior team members, but those estimates frequently failed. Project interdependencies were overlooked, customer satisfaction declined, and sales began to drop. The service delivery department struggled to meet commitments to existing clients.
That’s when our consultant joined the company to help establish a Project Management Office (PMO). The goal was to define consistent project management processes, select estimation tools and techniques, choose monitoring tools, and set up control mechanisms to manage product interdependencies. We also assisted the release manager with release planning, enabling end customers to set proper expectations. Within a few months, client satisfaction scores rose significantly, and the team was able to work at a sustainable pace while consistently meeting and exceeding customer expectations.
Story II - Incomplete project scope and false client expectations
A well-established firm won a tender to implement a customer application for a major IPTV provider in Canada. However, the person who had provided the Client with the initial estimates left the company, and the team struggled to meet deadlines that no longer seemed achievable. The Client’s lack of cooperation made the situation even more challenging. Our consultant joined the team to investigate and stabilize the project.
The first observation was that not all stakeholders had been properly identified, leaving many critical inputs missing when the initial time and cost baselines were created. The second issue was that even the incomplete scope required additional resources and specialized skill sets, some of which were not available internally, to deliver successfully. Finally, the milestone dates communicated to the Client were found to be unachievable.
Here’s what we did. During the first week, we identified all outstanding stakeholders and, through interviews, determined the existing scope gaps. We then divided the scope into releases so that the most important features could be delivered to the Client as Release 1. We scheduled the delivery date for Release 1 one week earlier than the date originally promised to the Client for the full scope. In the second week, we secured additional resources, including specialists with the required new skill sets. We met with the Client and explained that, due to scope expansion, we would deliver more features than originally planned across two releases. Accordingly, we introduced a revised cost baseline and budget.
As a result:
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The increased budget was approved.
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The scope was fully defined.
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Overall project duration was extended in alignment with the expanded work.
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Top product features were delivered to the Client a week earlier than originally promised.
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The client relationship significantly improved.
Story III - Engaging a vendor
The Customer Applications Department of a large IT company decided to implement an internal content management system (CMS) to store its assets - documentation, multimedia files, architecture documents, and flowcharts. They selected a vendor that had implemented similar tools for multiple clients across North America. A master agreement was signed, and the vendor presented the tool along with a statement of work. After reviewing it, the Client requested several customizations. The vendor claimed that some of the requested features could not be implemented and quoted an extremely high price for others.
Our consultant got involved and facilitated several sessions. The first was with the business department, where project sponsors explained the required features and provided a feature-priority list. The next session was held with the vendor. Our consultant explored the vendor’s product and led a detailed gap analysis. Each specific requirement was then reviewed collaboratively with the vendor.
As a result:
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The “non-customizable” features were resolved through adjusted requirements that provided similar functionality while being easier for the vendor to implement.
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Some features from the original statement of work were merged with new requirements to enable faster implementation.
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It was discovered that the vendor was planning a new release that already included some of the requested features. Since the Client agreed to include these in “Phase 2,” the overall implementation cost was reduced.
These are just a few scenarios, but there are certainly many others. What’s your case? Tell us.