Changing the Culture to a Customer-Centric Organization: Q&A

Ginger Levin specializes in the program, portfolio and OPM fields. She is a PMP, PgMP, an OPM3 Professional and a member of PMI's Registered Consulting Program. She received the Eric Jenett Award in 2014.

  Agile  

Our webinar Changing the Culture to a Customer-Centric Organization with Dr. Ginger Levin was incredibly popular. Here she offers advice based on your questions that she was unable to address during the session.

1. I find most environments (government and corporate) in acting to be "agile" still acquire a "software tool" to be used, thinking that solves it, instead of training their people. What is your perspective?
If the tool is selected and people are not trained in it, success is not likely to occur.  Moving to agile is a major change and people need to buy in and be committed to it for success.  Then, it is appropriate to get the tool.

2. Is it possible to become customer centric in government-run projects?
Yes, because government projects are done for users based on the government agency’s services and if the public no longer wants the services the agency provides, the agency soon will not exist.

3. Can a change to customer centricity be driven from the bottom up, or does it need to come from the top down?
It is always nice to have any change be driven from the top, but most of the time it is incumbent on people such as us, the project professionals, to make the business case for it.  In customer centricity, one approach might be to sell it to a department or business unit manager and try it out as a prototype …

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