Whenever the company you work for takes on a new project for a random customer there will always be some minor or major conflicts or missinterpretations from both sides. This is normal, for it is part of human nature for each person to interpretate things in their own way.
Some company bosses/managers might agree that the most important thing about a project that was agreed upon by both ends is the contract. This idea couldn’t possibly be any further away from the truth even if it tried.
In the same way that you might missinterpretate the ideas of a customer, he will also make his own presumptions about how the project should or will be carried out. Whether you are a manager, a programmer or a designer, you have to realize that your customer usually is not.
The Manager
If your customer conducts his business in a different way from yours that is normal, you don’t have to agree with it, you just have to follow the legal terms that were defined in the contract and define the borderline in the gray areas. Your sole job is not to only make the biggest profit possible, you have to listen to your customer’s demands and meet him halfway.
Public Relations / Designer
If your customer has a different taste from yours and finds your masterpiece design inadequate that is also normal, as the designer you are the person who has to “connect” to your customer the most, and understand his feelings and intentions.
Some customers already have a fixed idea of what their website should look like, if you present them with something that looks incredibly good, but is completely different from what he had in mind, he will be disapointed, even if your design was worthy of praise. Communication is the key here, and the designer, more than anyone else, should be the master of it.
The Programmer/Mechanic/”Labor force”
You are the “monkey”, the hamster running inside the wheel. You’re the last person to know anything about the customer. You hold the most unappreciated job because most of what you do isn’t palpable, visible or understandable by people who don’t realize what you do, yet, you are the one who makes it all happen.
If it weren’t for you the project wouldn’t be anything other than a nice idea, a great deal or a pretty picture.
You need to understand all of the work that was done before the project arrived. You need to know what the project is about, what it consists of, what was the budget, what leanway does the project have, what is the deadline, what are the customers tastes, what kind of person he is, what kind of sites/products does he like.
If the Designer or the PR person is meant to be the master of communication, the programmer has to be the master of understanding.
You need to explain clearly to your manager what the work involves, how long you think it will take and share your opinion on how viable you think the project, or the tasks at hand, are.
You need to talk to the PR, who had to understand what kind of product the customer wants, how things should work. You also have to make the PR understand that some of their “brilliant ideas” might not always be the most viable in the project’s scope.
The Team
Needs to be coese, understanding, and aware of the weight of their words and actions. The more your team members try to understand each other’s tasks, the better it is for them to realize how each of their tasks work.
Every member should always take a minute out of every conversation with their colleague to explain what the task at hand consists of. Doing so will not only improve the overall quality of the projects, but it will also make the next projects easier, and most mistakes, or ill-given tasks will not reoccur.
With all these things said, you’d think that the most important aspect is a gathering of the points made above…
It isn’t.
The most important aspect of any project is “listening”.
You can have the best manager who understands the scope of the project, knows fundaments of design and how the project development process works, and manages to squeeze the biggest amount of profit from the project…
You can have the best PR person in the world, one who can dive into the minds of the customer and find out everything that the customer wants from the project and more…
You can have the best programmer/mechanic/engineer that ever walked this planet, who can turn dust into gold, and achieves goal in lightning-fast times…
… and it won’t matter a thing, if the customer doesn’t follow the project, or listens to what your team has to say to him.
When customers are participative, and understanding, all phases of any project run smoother. The team members will work harder, they will be more motivated and feel more relevant in their tasks. And the only reason they will be is because they were listened by him.
When your team members have a hard time acknowledging the value of each other, and what each of their tasks involve, a lot of discrepancies start to occur in the project’s requirements, and tasks will start falling behind schedule.
If you’re dealing with a particularly “hard” customer, or a team that has a hard time communicating, this is where your manager or team leader has to step in, take the reins, and be the voice of that “perfect customer” or “perfect colleague”, and explain to the team members each of their tasks, without neglecting any of their words or the importance of their tasks.
Having a customer that listens, and a team that listens to itself, can make all the difference between a bad to a mediocre or a mediocre to a great project.
Griffith General customer, project management, public relations