Selling IT
Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.
When projects are selected and approved, it’s usually the result of some kind of review process. Many projects are considered, and the ones that are selected to be capable of delivering the biggest benefit are approved, scheduled and resourced. Even at this early stage there is a sales process going on--decision makers need to be sold on the benefits of the project or the project will never get out of the starting blocks.
The sales process can’t simply stop when the project is approved though--it needs to continue throughout the project, and as project managers we have a critical role to play.
Why sell your project?
I do tend to get some strange looks from PMs when I bring up the idea of selling their project--the response is usually that the sales process happens before the project and now it’s just a matter of execution. I’ll acknowledge that the selling is more subtle, but it’s still happening. Consider for an example a project to implement a new software system for the operations department of your organization.
This is the kind of project that will impact staff--the most obvious example is the operations team that will need to learn how to use the new system. They may not have a good understanding of the specific changes that are coming, but they will definitely have an opinion about it--and in many cases they will …
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"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell |
