isk has always been a headache for project managers. It is a risk if the customer relationship is not handled well, the expansion of the delivery scope is a risk, the change of requirements is a risk, and the teamwork is a risk. A little carelessness can lead to project failure.
In addition to real risks, there are also many projects that fall into "imagined risks". In other words, many risks are not unsolvable, but we think we cannot.
In my last project, the customer was in charge of the algorithm, and the delivery team was in charge of the application. Just less than three weeks before delivery, the team suggested that the customer's algorithm had bugs, which would lead to some problems beyond our ability to solve, so I reported A high-risk warning has been issued, and a Latest Mailing Database pessimistic mood has arisen, believing that the project is bound to fail.
Later, we sorted out the problems and analyzed the causes, but the results were far beyond our expectations. We found that most of the problems came from the application. The application was too fragile to parse the external input, and there was no good fault-tolerant mechanism. The application read The wrong parameters were set while doing the algorithm.
In other words, the team fell into the hole it dug for itself.
We also sorted out, tracked and recorded all the issues based on feelings. After the project ended, everyone reviewed them together. For everyone, it was a profound education.
In the process of project delivery, the team may face various complexities. Sometimes it needs to learn suddenly, and sometimes it needs to work overtime to meet the deadline. These challenges may become the pressure of the team, and the team is likely to change under heavy pressure. Be pessimistic. When the pessimism of one person becomes the pessimism of a group of people, the team loses its objective judgment on risks. At this time, what is most needed is facts.
Therefore, the first key to project management: in the face of risks, we need to do more analysis and manage risks, which must be based on facts.
02 Manage customers, communicate more and guess less
Many project managers believe that client management is the most challenging part of project management, and the most complicated part of client management is the management of decision makers.
Decision makers usually come from the top of the client, and sometimes they are the people who make the investment. They have ideas and have the right to speak, but their special status determines that they are usually very busy, and they are not the people we directly contact in the project.
If the decision makers are not managed well, the following situations often occur:
Halfway through the development of the project, decision makers appeared and overturned most of the functions that had been done well;
During the Showcase, the decision makers gave feedback, and all the items were changes in requirements;
When key business functions came to him, he couldn't ma