There is one aspect that I unswervingly observe about project managers in relation to their project success rate, even though habitually my project management observations firmly occur from the SharePoint side. It seems without disappointment that the cumulative number of successful projects that a PM owns correlates with the maturity of their ability to elegantly push clients back from making decisions that appear to be unhealthy. In other words, they can look a client in the face, and while saying “yeah….that’s actually bullshit and we’re not going to do it”, appropriately spin a “no” response so that it doesn’t emerge so negative. In fact, they can get a client downright excited to get turned down for a feature that’s bubbled up, basically acknowledging that the client requirement makes sense, hell it’s a great idea, but it increases risk and costs right now. Coupling with this distinct skill is that these types of project managers often times can also step back from a client given requirement, and gauge what would be the most apposite response, regardless of the size of the decision. While at first glance the cost of immediately accepting such a poor input from the client is not instantaneously evident (since it is somewhat masked by the requirements timeline) even smaller decisions when coupled together can swiftly disassemble what otherwise can prove to be a successful project.

The incapacity to say “no” can without difficulty produce chaos with any type of project regardless of industry and target; however it is extremely prevalent to see it within software development projects. More specifically, with SharePoint projects (since project management on SharePoint will often, like several software products, mutate into some type of Software Product Strategy [SPS]). The grounds that scope creep and requirements overflow is so ordinary with collaboration systems is because its very nature is to touch and enable so many information workers. Once people get a taste of the functionality that you are offering them, the recommendations start to come in on how to enhance the system. The recommendations might get the right management ear, and then they become requirements, which tend to be out of the original project scope. Since internal customer management might not be technically experienced or not required to be for their job role, it is often difficult for them to put a filter in place which would otherwise sieve through those requirements. Following, those requirements are characteristically shot gunned at the consultants.

I am guilty of this as well; it’s not just an internal problem from the client. I often will bring additions that I am certain will greatly benefit the entire SharePoint environment. As a good SharePoint project manager though, while one should recognize that I might have good ideas for the platform, focusing on meeting the basic requirements is what at the end of the day pays the bills.

I am in no way proposing that for each requirement that comes down the pipeline that it should be immediately rejected. That would hinder and constrain the overall project deliverables, while making you appear to be rigid to both the client and your internal project team. I have however known, and worked for, companies in the past that handled requirements as they came down with instantaneous dismissal since it is admittedly the safest route to take. On the other end of the coin, you have requirements fanatics, which I tend to hate to work with even more than the former zealots. These personalities become aware of a requirement and it becomes holy doctrine for the rest of the team, they tend to be too god damn excited on delivering such random, unmeasured features to the client. Their passion for developing components for the customer is often times dampened with failure that ensues due to their mismanagement of basic organizational tasks when they become too overwhelmed with out of context actions.

Some of the reasons that a project manager, in the context of SharePoint, should say no is:

1) While this feature will extend our SharePoint environment, it is more of a nice-to-have, and not really a baseline requirement for this project

2) The calculated effort requirement by either/both the development or operations staff doesn’t really justify the production of the feature

3) The subproject in the terms of the current contract constraints doesn’t procure a practical baseline for reallocation (or allocation) of resources to make it a tangible production.

4) While this feature from the development or operations end is awesome, it is something that client doesn’t immediately realize the need for, or will never be noticed by the client

5) Holy crap, this doesn’t even qualify because it is so experimental, it isn’t funny (kind of like when a client asked me to build neural networks for forecasting models off SharePoint lists. Probably should have nixed that one).

So what to do? It’s all about promoting and maintaining a careful balance, supplemented with a project manager’s largest tool, a butt load of documentation. In this case, the particular piece of documentation that becomes your best friend is all that good stuff involved in the Change Control Process. I don’t mean go, download, and implement 50 templates that almost certainly include a bunch of fluff documents not required for your project. Each project is dissimilar, and since Change Control Processes while often times characterizing an orthodox set of documentation templates, doesn’t unavoidably mean it is all of a sudden project creed. The Change Control Process we must take into account is a supplement to a contract, placing both the client, as well as consultant, in a position to be subject to it. While it is inflexible in this regard, it ensures that requirements acknowledged and accounted for in the project plan are readily available to the client so that you can guarantee familiarity of current project state. Even while taking in the changes that may have come down the pipeline.

It is important that a project manager says “no” to a client, is all I am attempting to emphasize through this I suppose. This is particularly evident in SharePoint projects. While you shouldn’t say “no” to everything, the client is going to be partial to your organization a lot more when you completely relinquish a project with all the contracted features rather than delivering what is essentially a failed project with several half baked features.

Article Or Research Filed Under General (Personal)| SharePoint Architecture.

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8 Comments »

1. 

   Great post and dead accurate in my experience. It’s also extremely hard to say No to a client, but it must be done some times.

   Comment by Paul Galvin — May 19, 2008 @ 1:35 pm

2. [...] Go to the author’s original blog: 1 Step To Better SharePoint Project Management – Say No [...]

   Pingback by 1 Step To Better SharePoint Project Management - Say No — May 19, 2008 @ 2:30 pm

3. 

   Love this post – very close to my heart. *secret homie handshake*

   Love your work and site by the way..

   Paul

   Comment by Paul Culmsee — May 20, 2008 @ 8:47 am

4. 

   My brother, an improv coach, taught me a game called “Yes, and…” where no matter what the other person says, you have to follow with “Yes, and…”–back and forth.

   With Project Management, you can often use the “Yes, and” approach to manage customer expectations. Just be careful it doesn’t sound sarcastic. By avoiding the words “no” and “but” you sound agreeable and the customer thinks everything is their idea!

   Customer: “We want to add X to our implementation.”

   PM: “Yes, and X is a great use of this technology. It should only add 3 months of development and testing to this project.”

   Customer: “Well, we need to finish this on time with the budget we have, so maybe we can put that into a phase II?”

   PM: “Yes, and I’d be happy to meet with the focus group you’ve identified to flesh out the requirements.”

   Customer: “Riiight, I’ll send you a meeting request–in a couple of weeks.”

   Comment by AutoSponge — May 27, 2008 @ 8:47 am

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   Pingback by Project Management Basics. | 7Wins.eu — June 11, 2008 @ 5:54 pm

6. [...] This really qualifies as general project and product management, but SharePoint Shelter has a wonderful post about saying no to feature requests using SharePoint. [...]

   Pingback by Usability Counts | Blog Archive | SharePoint Fridays: Say No Is Hard To Do, But The Right Thing — August 15, 2008 @ 9:16 am

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8. 

   Really useful article and comments, thanks a lot

   -Adam#

   Comment by adam.bullas — February 1, 2010 @ 8:24 am

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