Ideally we glide through our projects with happy customers and arrive at deployment ready to shake hands and say goodbye…all on good terms.  Reality, though, is often something altogether different. 

I'd like to say I never experience customer frustrations on any of my projects, but the truth is I've experienced some degree of customer frustration on nearly every project at some point during the process.  It may be a big issue or it may be something miniscule, but at some point it usually happens.
 
Customer frustrations can arise from any one of a number of things.  From unanticipated change orders, to error-filled deliverables, to rude project team members, to project budget issues, to just conflicting personalities. 

Anything – literally – can set it off and it may not be a showstopper, but it should be addressed.  The potential issues can be endless – so I definitely can't address all the possibilities here.  But we can discuss a few possible proactive or responsive measures we can take to try to alleviate customer frustrations if we sense that things aren't going as well as hoped…at least from the customer's point of view….
 

Step up communication practices
 
Effective, efficient, and timely communication remains, in my mind, the number one responsibility of the project manager.  All task assignments, all feedback, all customer interaction, all issues resolution, and all collaboration in general, begins and ends with good communication. 

In fact, with more than 50% of all projects failing, one survey showed that project managers cite 'poor communication' as the second biggest contributor to project failure – right behind 'bad or incomplete requirements.'
 
If a failure point at the beginning of the project was to skip the creation of a project communications plan and now you're seeing communication breakdown, it may be the right time to go back and create the plan so everyone has the same communication expectations going forward for the rest of the project.

 
Revisit weak areas
 
There may be weak areas of the project that are causing the customer concern like how risk is being handled or possibly the delivery of error-prone deliverables.  Revisit those weak areas and add more effort where needed.

For example, begin reviewing risk topics and issues regularly on a weekly basis as part of the weekly status call or meeting with the customer.  If deliverables have been a problem area, incorporate peer reviews on every future deliverable.  Having the entire team review every deliverable will greatly reduce the likelihood of presenting the customer with a document or deliverable with issues or errors.
 
 
React to team member concerns
 
If the customer is frustrated with someone on the team, meet with the customer to find out why, meet with the team member to work out some corrective action, and then jointly meet with the customer to discuss. 

Personnel issues rarely work themselves out on their own and if there is friction between the customer and one of your team members it may not even be obvious to your team member.  Bring it to the forefront and take the necessary corrective action BEFORE your customer has to request a replacement.  If you let it get to that point, then your leadership will definitely be called into question as well.

 
Circle back
 
If necessary, go back to the kickoff presentation and notes to analyze where you are vs. where you should be in terms of process and promises and assumptions.  It's never too late to try to get the project back on track and make the customer feel comfortable again. 

It's possible that you discussed processes, actions and policies that would be implemented or followed and they never happened or were never implemented.  If that is the case, it may be frustration point for the customer to see that it was an expectation that was never fulfilled.  Often the customer sees it as something they paid for but never received. 

 
Call for input
 
Customer satisfaction is one of the three key indicators of project success, so responding to and resolving customer frustration should always be a top priority.  When you've experienced customer frustration, how have you responded?  What actions have you taken to resolve these issues?  What general approaches have worked the best for you?  Thanks – we'd love to see your feedback!
 

Keeping the project budget in line is one of the most difficult things that a project manager does – and yet it is a huge factor in determining the overall success of the project when the engagement winds down.

The goal is to keep it in line throughout and avoid falling into emergency mode at any point with a huge budget overrun that you have to either fix or find yourself at the brink of project shutdown.
 
Through my experience, I've found that the following three processes are extremely helpful to me as I try to keep my project budgets in check on the multiple projects I'm usually managing at any given point in time. Project managers are busy with many things beyond managing the budget on our plate.

Developing good processes and habits will help you significantly reduce the likelihood that your project budget will turn into a catastrophe.  Let's review each of the three ways to minimize your project budget exposure more closely….

 
Review and revise the project budget at least weekly 

The first thing you can do to protect your project budget is probably the easiest thing you can do and it is definitely the least invasive thing you can do.  All it requires is you – and the proper information provided to you on a weekly basis. 

Get weekly information from Accounting concerning the charges to your project and revise your information diligently every week. This may seem simple…even mundane.  But it always amazes me how many project managers get lazy and let this slide for a week or two and then eventually longer.  "Hey, it wasn't a problem three weeks ago and nothing significant has happened on the project so why should my budget be in jeopardy now?" 
 
Well, it's amazing how the little things build up – and they can build up fast.  Stay on top of the budget – don't let a week go by without comparing forecast to actuals and re-forecasting, if necessary. It's much easier to fix a 10% budget overrun now before it gets out of control than it is to fix a 40% budget overrun a month from now after it is already out of control.

And which one is management going to be more pleased about hearing?  Which one will the customer be more understanding of and flexible in working with you on?
 

Make your project budget high profile

This is also a fairly easy one and it has worked extremely well for me.  And if you're organization is a matrix organization with everyone working on multiple projects at once, even better.  Here's the scenario….
 
You are a project manager running five projects at once. Each of your technical team members are on – on average – three different projects at the same time.  And let's remember that – in all honesty – 80-90% of all employees calculate their project charges for the week at the last minute, usually on Friday. 

Very few accurately document their time during each workday or at the end of the day.  And we all remember most of what we did each week … but there's always that four or five hours that we really can't pinpoint exactly what we were doing.  We know we worked 50 hours this week, but can only accurately account for 45 of them.  They have to go somewhere.  Where do they go? They go to the project that they feel those hours will be least noticed in.  And that is usually the project that those personnel know is not being monitored closely. 
 
So don't let that be your project.  Make sure your team members know you're watching the project budget – and the hours that they charge to it – like a hawk. Discuss the budget with them at every weekly internal team meeting and give them a status update on how the project budget is standing up to the original forecast.  Share your concerns with them. 

Periodically question them on charges just to keep them on their toes. Don't be accusing, just ask them questions about the charges and the work that was being performed.  If they know you're that aware, it's highly unlikely that any of your projects will be recipients of the 'grey' hours at the end of each work week.
 

Manage scope closely

This is probably the hardest one to do and can have the most devastating affect on the project budget.  The problem here can be two fold. 

You have the issue of managing the project scope from your project manager perspective and negotiating changes and change orders with the customer.  But you also have the task of managing your project team members closely as they work with the customer. 
 
On at least a third of my projects I've run across potential scope issues through discussions I've had with my project team members who were in close communication with the customer. They tend to develop a relationship with the customer and then you have the ego trip issue of your developer 'knowing' they can do anything quickly and easily.

The customer makes a small request, your developer thinks it will be no problem to incorporate this 'new' request quickly and you end up having a developer spend a few hours – which can mean a few thousand dollars - of your precious project budget on a customer request that is likely beyond the original scope of the project. 
 
None of this was malicious or even on purpose – they were just helping out the customer on a small request. Inform your team, warn them of these situations, and then ask them about their customer interactions and any requests that may be coming their way when you meet with them internally on a weekly basis.


 
Call for feedback
 
Let's hear from our readers.  What budget issues have you experienced?  Do you find it hard, at times, to rein your team in when trying to keep costs down.  What steps do you take to keep your project budget from getting out of hand?

How can you achieve customer service so fine that clients actually comment on it and spread the word about your company? Learn from the benchmark experiences of other companies, and benefit from the latest technologies to facilitate your work.

123 EDI, a leading provider of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), has been offering a variety of robust, cost-effective EDI solutions since 1991. Projects of 123 EDI are typically complex and require coordination between sales, accounting and programming departments to ensure the company meets and even exceeds customers' expectations.

According to Bernie Murciano, President at 123 EDI, the following principles, supported by Wrike's features, help to achieve top-notch customer service:

Attention to detail
Being thorough in performing clients' requests, minding the details, no matter how small they are, is crucial on the road to customer satisfaction. But can you take the load of remembering too many things off your brain and still deliver everything and more to your clients?

Yes, you can! Wrike stores all the short-term and long-term commitments of 123 EDI, providing "a view of the big picture without losing sight of the many details" says Bernie. Thus, 123 EDI stays ahead of the game and ensures that even minor customer needs are not overlooked. "Positive customer feedback doubled in a couple of months after we adopted Wrike," shares Bernie.

Seamless collaboration
To achieve excellent customer service, a unified effort of all the organizational departments is required. 123 EDI chose Wrike for teamwork with its enhanced collaboration features: real-time discussions, handy ways to follow tasks, and a cross-project newsfeed to track progress with ease.

What makes Wrike especially convenient for collaboration is easy data-sharing on project progress with everyone involved. If you wish to connect remote teams, external partners and clients to the project, you can easily do so – the number of external viewers is unlimited.  Bernie confirms: "Wrike's user-friendly web application keeps everyone on the same page."

Commitment to timelines
When you deliver a project on time, customers appreciate it and come back for more. With Wrike's automatic reminders about tasks and updates, you never miss a deadline.

Scheduling tasks is simple and can be done from list, table and timeline views in real time. Bernie Murciano values this ability "to more effectively prioritize tasks by revising due dates." Thus, 123 EDI quickly reacts to the ever-changing business conditions, so that no customer is disappointed by a missed deadline. 

Now that you know Bernie's opinion on what's crucial for improving customer service, we'd love to hear about your experiences! If you wish to share your stories about how Wrike's implementation helped you to tackle project or business management challenges, you are very welcome to do so! Contact us at support@team.wrike.com.

Smaller organizations and startups are great to work in and consult for as they exude enthusiasm and a do-whatever-it-takes attitude.  It's especially appealing to an independent IT consultant like me who is basically a small/startup type organization as well…doing whatever it takes to succeed, market myself, get by... etc. The fit is good.

One thing I've noticed about smaller organizations, though, is that beneath that layer of enthusiasm lies a company in need.  They often lack structure, but that may not really be their primary need.  Indeed, too much structure will stifle the efforts of those entrepreneurial spirits running the show at a smaller, startup-type company.  But they are almost always in need of more efficient processes and some organization.  Their wins are often coming by luck, because they're too busy innovating and meeting growing customer demands to actually track what's working and repeating those steps again.

Setting the stage

So, as a project manager or incoming consultant, the best thing you can offer to a smaller organization is an injection of project management best practices.  How you do that and what exactly those best practices are may indeed be somewhat dependent on the organization, the industry, and the state of the projects that are in progress or ready to start.  From my past experience, what I've found these organizations need quickly are:

Customer education.  Sit down with each customer for the small organization and explain what changes will and are being made to make their projects more successful and the PM oversight more accountable.

Injection of successful project management processes.  Next, rollout PM best practices within the organization and on the many projects being executed.  This likely will involve some teaching and learning and it will definitely take some refinement over time.  Eventually it will be second nature as project successes become more frequent with more PM structure.

Project management oversight of the development process.  To further ensure a tighter ship and more successful PM practice, I highly recommend initially having heavy oversight of the development team by project management.  I've seen it work in smaller startup-type situations…I've made it work personally in smaller startup-type situations.  When you must inject better processes and you must turn projects around quickly, it may be your only choice.

The best practices

We've discussed some quick actions to take to roll out best practices into a small organization where they were previously needed but lacking.  Now let's consider what those best practices should be for the small startup-types...

Consistent project status reporting.  Come up with a fairly standard project status report and stick to it.  Include project status, key dates, key tasks and assignments and outstanding issues.  Include all key information for both your team and your customer and provide it on a weekly basis to every stakeholder on the project.

Consistent project status meetings.  Hold weekly meetings with your team and customer on the project.  Adhoc meetings are ok and often necessary, but relying on them all the time can be annoying and can lead to decreased attendance and, subsequently, decreased effectiveness.

Detailed budget management.  Manage the project budget tightly.  Too many PMs shoot from the hip in small organizations because they're given too much freedom.  And then they wonder why the project failed because it went way over budget. A budget that is watched carefully, reforecasted consistently, and reported on relentlessly can never get too far out of hand.  Don't let the financials be the reason why your project failed.

Use of a collaborative project management tool.  I highly recommend going web-based for a project management tool, but it's imperative that it be a collaborative tool.  In a smaller organization like the ones we're discussing, everyone is wearing multiple hats and often working long hours.  They also may be very decentralized – they may often be very geographically dispersed.  Many small organizations don't even have a headquarters yet.  So a powerful, inexpensive, and web-based project management tool that allows the team to gather, share documents, update tasks, etc. on their own without the obligation of running every piece of information through a central PM figure will ensure that the project is well-managed in real time.

Summary
While there's no way to guarantee project success in any organization – big or small - no matter what you do, utilizing PM best practices will always provide some level of benefit to the projects being managed and the organization as a whole.  Communication is improved, customers are more comfortable during the engagement, and the project staff is usually able to work more cohesively as a unit focused on the overall goals of the project.  Injecting PM best practices into a newer, smaller, growing organization will help that organization retain customers and develop into a mature organization that can regularly and successfully deliver on projects in the future.

We all have projects that reappear from time to time: similar customer contracts, feature releases, regular trade shows, etc. And when a new project with basically the same milestones starts, we all would love to have a one-click way to set it up. As so many of you voted for adding a feature for quiсk duplicating of folders, today we are excited to roll it out for you!

The feature will become a huge time-saver if you have a lot of similar projects. You simply create a new folder, say "Client order" and duplicate it with its milestones, tasks and subfolders in just a few seconds the next time you receive a new order. Simply right-click on the folder used as a template and choose "Duplicate folder" in the pop-up menu. In the dialog’s entry field, write the name for the new project (let it be "Biggest order ever!") and customize the new project.
 
The template folder will be copied with its subfolders and milestones by default, but you also have the option to copy the tasks (1) with their descriptions, attachments and assignees (2).
 
The last checkbox (3) in the dialog lets you adjust the new project's schedule. You set the start date of the first task in the folder, and the other tasks are rescheduled accordingly. They keep the same sequence, durations and time intervals between them as in your template folder.  If you leave this box unchecked, the tasks' dates will be identical to the schedule in the original folder.
 
The next time your prospective client calls you to tell you've won the project, you'll set up and customize a new project in just a few minutes. Then share the plan with the client or simply e-mail them an image of the project's Gantt chart – you’ll look super-efficient!
 
We invite you to try the power of instant folder duplication and share your experience with us! If you are looking forward to having more new, handy features, let us know about them on our feature voting portal!

Today one more feature from your wish list has come true! Many of you who actively use the built-in time tracking tool in Wrike asked us for the ability to add a detailed description of the hours spent on a task. For instance, when you look through the time report of the task to follow-up on the contacts from the last trade show, it would be very handy to see how much time was spent on follow-up for each prospective client. Thanks to the new feature of adding comments to time entries, now this is easy to do!

When you click on the "hours spent" link in the task details, you will see the text box right below the field for entering hours. You can use this text box to specify what exactly you have done so far.

In the time report, you will see not only a list of time entries for each task, but also have a clue about what the time was spent on. This way, you can always provide your clients with a thorough report of what you are billing them for and ask the same from your contractors.


More new handy features are on their way to come before Christmas! In the meantime, if you have ideas of what can make you more productive, please let us know at our voting forum.

Most of us have a page on Facebook, which currently counts over 600 million users all over the globe. You might’ve heard that the secret sauce helping it scale so well is the “social graph” concept. But imagine if people got connected not as individuals, but as workers with their units of work. And, just as everyone shares their personal photos, interests and news on Facebook, people collaborating among each other would share the work-related data within a “work graph.” What happens if the graph model is taken into business world, and what exactly is the work graph? Find out in a guest article by our CEO, Andrew Filev, on SandHill.com: “The Facebook Effect: Three Ways the Social Graph Is Transforming Business Collaboration.”

In the article, Andrew highlights the lessons that the business collaboration space can learn from Facebook and discusses why the “work graph,” our own unique concept, has the potential to turn us all into project management and collaboration rock stars. We built Wrike with this vision - to connect work for thousands of people - and now we came up with this special name for our model. You can get a feel of it right now by using Wrike!

Have you ever wished to be saved from the pressure of looming deadlines? If so, prioritizing work is exactly what you need! Explicit and timely prioritization helps your team focus on the most important and urgent tasks, fight off distractions, and avoid deadline panic.

If you drop by our blog, you already know how easy it is to prioritize tasks in Wrike, as it takes only a mouse motion to set, adjust and share task priorities with your team. Prioritizing tasks is so crucial for efficient organization of work that it deserves more attention, and we decided to shoot a video on this topic. Our new video will help you refine your priorities and let important and urgent tasks make their way to the top of your team’s to-do lists:



Now that you know our suggestions for avoiding the stress of a hectic schedule, please tell us about your practices for defining and sharing work priorities. What tricks do you use to keep the most important and urgent tasks on the radar?

 

A picture is worth a thousand words, so what about a video? Or even a video channel! We decided to give you a full overview of Wrike's tutorials in our brand-new Wrike TV.

Come visit our YouTube channel, where you already can find several new arrivals – on Wrike's integration with Google docs, handy drag-and-drop support and the fantastic Activity Stream. Here's a piece on how you can work on Google Docs collaboratively in Wrike:


But this is just a beginning, as we want to turn our channel into a get-together to exchange great project management ideas. We will share some interesting experiences of project management gurus and useful tips on efficient collaboration in the easy form of little videos. As you can see, the most interesting updates are on their way, so stay tuned! You can easily subscribe to our channel with your Google account.

Do you have a piece of practical advice or an inspiring team experience to share with other viewers? Be our TV guest star and cover yourself with glory! We prepared a small present for you – a gift card for ThinkGeek – to thank you for helping our users become more productive. We also have some gifts to raffle off among the first 100 lucky subscribers and anticipate presenting them to you!