What Exactly Are You Getting Yourself Into?… A Pre-Project Checklist

Sooner or later, the salesperson must move on to the next sale, leaving the promises that have been made in securing the deal for others to fulfill. However, the good salesperson, keen to maintain ongoing and repeat customer revenue, does not just walk away once the deal is signed.

On the contrary, he/she keeps a close watchful eye over both the relationship and the delivery post-sale. He/she will also ensure a careful transfer of day-to-day responsibility for that customer to a project or account manager.

With these things in mind, here is a list of questions that can prove very helpful in bringing about a successful handover:

1. What is the overall objective of the project?

• Just what is it that defines success from the customer’s point of view?
• What is the customer trying to achieve?
• How does the project tie in with the customer’s overall strategy/goals?

2. What are the deliverables?

• Are there deliverables required by the project that you are not explicitly responsible for?
• Are you working to deliver a finite set of deliverables, or to provide some business capability?
• Are you working to deliver a set of independent deliverables, or an integrated end-to-end solution?
• How will the quality of the deliverables be determined?

3. Are you working to implement a specific solution, or to solve a problem?

• Are you responsible for the delivery of deliverables, or for achieving some business benefits?
• Are you providing a point solution, or the total solution?

4. How is the customer going to measure success at the end of the project?

• Is the customer interested in the process as well as the result?
• How much progress visibility does the customer want?
• From the customer’s point of view, what can flex? For example, does he/she want predictability, or speed?
• What tradeoffs or compromises are likely to be required?

5. What are the project risks?

• What sort of projects risks – be they technical or financial – are there, both on the supplier side and the buyer side?
• What known or unknown issues might potentially pose problems?
• Do any items in the final negotiation/terms need further clarification?
• Are there any external considerations or political sensitivities to bear in mind?
• What is the cultural context in terms of the customer organization?

6. How well-managed is the project going to be?

• Has the timeline – including milestones, dependencies and review points – been agreed?
• How rigid or agile is the approach to project management going to be?
• How will performance against time and budget be tracked?

7. How does the customer want to work with you?

• Who will be the customer’s project manager?
• What reporting and communications structures have been agreed upon?
• How much teamwork and consultation will there be?
• How will decisions be made with regard to the project?
• Can your sponsor allocate all the necessary resources to the project?
• What stakeholders must be involved?
• How high up in the customer’s list of priorities is the project?
• Who can legitimately put requirements upon the project?

8. What is outside scope in terms of the project?

• How well-defined are the requirements?
• Does the customer have any additional requirements that are not defined in either the scope or req doc?
• What is the process for redefining scope, or for change requests?

Posted by Ray Collis on Nov 15 2010. Filed under 8. Forget Closing And Moving On, Keeping Promises, Project Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry