It Project Manager Manual (II)-What are the common mistakes in the survey preparation phase?

Generally, after receiving a survey task, everyone will prepare a survey site work plan and conduct some research preparation work.
According to my observations, there are often several errors in the research preparation phase.
The first Easy mistake: The purpose of the survey is unclear.
Many people write the plan as follows when writing the on-site work purpose: "completing the on-site project survey ".
In fact, the completion of the on-site investigation is not the purpose of planning this activity, but it is precisely an effective means to accomplish the purpose of this survey.
So what is the purpose of the research?
There are three real research objectives:
Users: let users think that the investigator is very familiar with or has enough ability to understand the existing business processes of the enterprise.
For competitors: for pre-sales research, we need to create a threshold for competitors at any time to understand the thresholds they have designed for us.
For the company: the Survey has enough information to bring the sequencer into the next stage of work.
Many of us believe that we must clarify the business of an enterprise during the investigation. However, we must remember that the person who can evaluate your understanding of the business is not a member of your company, but a user.
If the user thinks that the investigator is very or has the ability to understand their business, they naturally trust the investigator's subsequent solutions or product demonstrations.
If users think that the investigators are very or have the ability to understand their business, it is natural for them to persuade or help their colleagues with high quality in subsequent work.
People who understand this purpose will design a large number of opportunities in the research phase to continuously strengthen their sense of identity with the investigators. If the end user agrees with the investigator, or a large number of users agree with the investigator, both the pre-sales ticket and after-sales implementation have begun to obtain the widest range of support, the chances of project success are constantly increasing.
Some enterprise businesses are very complex, and enterprise users may not be clear about them. They are unlikely to understand all business details in the short term, especially in the pre-sales research phase, users are unlikely to be motivated to spend a lot of time with the research work. At this time, the purpose of the research is to convince users that the company or Team of the investigator is capable of understanding the business of the enterprise. With this foundation of trust, a lot of work will be easily promoted.
Some project users arrange several suppliers for the same period of time, or arrange several suppliers for two or three days for a survey in a very compact period, at this time, it may be difficult for all suppliers to have a complete understanding of the project situation immediately. At this time, it is not so much the purpose of the research is to fully understand the business process of the enterprise, it is better to let users think that we are the most experienced in this field, and most likely to understand the business process of the enterprise, and then bring the door to competitors.
Therefore, in our research work, we should use standardized business procedures to make users feel that we are a big company. Through business exchanges, users can recognize our professional knowledge and skills in this field, identify and highlight our strengths through business needs, create pressure on our competitors, and learn what thresholds our competitors have created for us, resolve them flexibly, or provide usable information for subsequent technical exchanges.
The higher the quality of our research work, the higher the degree of recognition, the greater the pressure on our opponents. Generally, the more opportunities an opponent has to make mistakes under pressure, and the more likely it is to be prepared, the higher the probability of project success.
Once the investigation is completed, the investigator needs to know a step. What should I do after the investigation? Is it a solution, a technical exchange, a product demonstration, or an implementation solution?
No matter what work is being done, especially when other colleagues in the company work together, the investigator is obligated to confirm that his or her survey information is clearly received and understood by colleagues who need to know the information, and can carry out the follow-up work well.
Only when this is done can the research work be completed. Otherwise, the investigator personally deems that the survey work is of high quality. If the successor does not agree with the survey or does not understand the survey Business Report, the quality of subsequent work is still not guaranteed. At this time, the research work does not play a role. Therefore, the investigator is concerned with respect to his work, it is also necessary to schedule time for subsequent personnel to identify and understand their business research content.
In fact, an effective team will collect team members' opinions on the survey records at any time during the survey process, and dynamically adjust the survey process, instead of letting team members absorb a large amount of information at the end of the final investigation. Experienced personnel who plan a project must also consider the coordination between research work and subsequent work, and require personnel at all stages to communicate and cooperate in a timely manner.
The second easy mistake: the plan is not detailed enough.
Many people often have only a few simple words when they plan to implement specific activities. A certain Department conducts business research on a certain day of a certain year.
To write a plan in this way, you may not know where to start the survey, so you have to write it like this first. You can take a further look at it at the site, or you may think you have some research experience and know how to deal with it, therefore, when writing a plan, I attempted to confuse the internal leader in charge, but I also wrote it, reducing the cost of quality.
In fact, who should we write a plan? The plan is confirmed by the customer manager. The more clearly the User Manager understands your work content, the more convenient it will be to help you arrange your work.
The user leader or sometimes the user coordinator also hopes that our work at the site will be compact and reasonable without wasting time on each other. However, users do not know how to conduct such research. What they can do is to arrange suitable personnel for cooperation based on our opinions.
If your research is about to come to your site for research in a few days, the user leader may actually answer, take you first, and come and talk about it. Results Most of the time on-site investigation resources and waiting were coordinated, and a large amount of time was wasted without value.
Therefore, a good plan should be operable and executable, which can also be clearly understood by users.
My personal suggestion plan may include details on which department should be investigated every morning and afternoon, and how long it will take for qualified personnel to cooperate and learn about business issues, required documents. In this way, it is also convenient for user leaders to cooperate with each other.
In addition, a detailed plan is just the right embodiment of our professional background and professionalism. What is more cost-effective than this? We only need to make a reasonable template and write a few more words each time to get a good impression.
Another point that must be clarified is that writing a detailed plan does not have to take a long schedule. It is impossible for any research work to clarify all the situations. It is not a single investigation that can be completed.
In fact, we need to be aware of research at any time in a project. Once new facts are found to be inconsistent with historical research, we can immediately refine our research conclusions and make relevant adjustments.
Therefore, we know that each survey has a cost concept. The purpose of the survey is to obtain sufficient quality information for the next stage of work.
Sometimes one or two days of research can achieve this goal, and the research can also end.
Even a day's research plan can be carefully prepared.

Third easy-to-make mistake: the plan is not communicated internally
Many people have received a survey task, wrote the plan, and started to communicate with users immediately. They have a good working spirit and are an action-driven team.
However, it has already been emphasized that the research is not a separate business behavior, and the research is a starting task. Therefore, our survey plan must be consulted by the customer manager and other personnel involved in the survey, and the opinions of some key projects and even executives of the company should be evaluated to see if it is worth further consideration.
The most important thing is that the internal communication plan is a process of agreeing with other departments to cooperate in the follow-up work. Through internal communication, the rationality of the survey should be improved, how can I hand over my work to others to facilitate subsequent work arrangements.
The investigator should not rush to complete a survey, submit a document, and then invest in another project. After a while, the customer manager asked for the demonstration. Then, when the demo preparation looked at the business research report and was in the fog, he was unable to communicate with the investigator in depth about the business and to carry out high-quality work.
Therefore, in internal communication, it is actually a self-protection of the investigator. If you agree with others about the input and output documents and quality requirements of the phase work, you can finish the work, in the future, my colleagues will be able to work independently, but they will be confused.
For example, some projects need to prepare a Demo Scheme simultaneously in the survey phase, so the investigator should know who is responsible for the demo configuration during the survey phase and agree to communicate with them in an effective way, it is easy to consider how to prepare for the survey.
If it is clear that this type of work is to be carried out, no demonstration preparation personnel is arranged. As a professional, the investigator should at least fulfill the responsibilities of reminding the customer manager to apply for resource preparation in advance.
Helping your team members make fewer mistakes is also a mature professional manager mentality, no matter how important or unimportant your job is.
In addition, in internal communication, if it is a pre-sales project, it is important to consider communicating with the customer manager a very important question: the timing of research.
In general, do not be the first investigator easily. The first investigator must be a competent individual. In the case of a good user relationship, do a good job after investigation, it puts pressure on subsequent competitors.
This is because if users find that they are not competent or are not professional enough, they will enhance their sense of identity with the first investigator.
However, if you are not capable enough, you can give your opponent a chance to surpass others. At this time, you can arrange a survey again, and it is very difficult to save your first impression score.
In addition to avoiding risks in this aspect, the first investigator does not do this. There is also a major benefit: the individual who does not plant trees and needs to plant fruits.
Many users often do not know what the software they want to buy is, so the first batch of researchers spend a lot of energy on instilling concepts. If the basic concepts are unclear, users often cannot put forward valuable demands, and there is always no margin for research.
When the second investigator conducts further research, the user will know a lot of things, and the quality of answering questions will be relatively high. At the same time, we can also have the opportunity to learn about the opponent's cards, make targeted preparations, and wait for a while.
Of course, when the investigation is conducted should be considered by the customer manager. Our investigators should at least know how the customer manager considers this issue. In addition, the survey usually requires the customer manager to work with the site, so the Survey Plan schedule must be confirmed by the customer manager to prevent unexpected changes.
But to be honest, in this industry, the customer manager is basically naive, and the research work is often started blindly, ending in the grass.

Fourth easy mistake: the plan was not confirmed by the user
Some of us make the survey plan well and tell the users to form the plan, so they are ready to go to the site as planned. Such a researcher fails.
Some people will send an email or fax to the user in advance, then confirm the receipt by phone, and then confirm that there is no problem with the time, and then, the investigator 60 points.
Some people will not only confirm the plan time, but will also carefully check whether the plan content is recognized and cooperated with relevant business personnel, and then go back after receiving a positive commitment. Such a person will score 80 points.
Some people will also prepare some pre-research documents and data preparation lists, so that the customer manager can cooperate with the implementation before the investigation. Such a person scored 100 points.
We need at least 80 points!
After the plan is sent to the user, the user generally does not take it seriously and implement it. This is the Chinese people's habit of doing things, especially some low-position contacts, maybe I have no courage to seek leadership for this matter.
Therefore, you must ask the user to confirm whether the plan can be carried out. After receiving a positive response, the plan will be executed more securely, the second is to give others a serious impression.
The implementation of this plan can also be communicated with the customer manager, asking them to use their contacts in the enterprise for implementation.
Recently, one of my colleagues made this mistake. after the contract was signed, the Agency was very anxious to urge us to go to the site to implement the research work. This colleague immediately formulated a plan and sent it to the agent, at the same time, confirm the receipt of the plan by phone, and then immediately leave as planned.
As a result, the agent said that the user was not ready. Why did you come? Our colleagues are also very depressed. We plan to make a phone call if there is a problem, so we don't need to make a phone call if there is no problem. Since there is no phone call, we certainly do it as planned. As a result, the beginning of both parties is unpleasant. This is because they do not understand the characteristics of the Chinese people. The Chinese people are expected to communicate and confirm the tasks orally, and the responsible tasks must be confirmed in writing.

Fifth easy mistake: no careful preparation
The research should be carefully prepared, but it is easy to do. Many people are very casual in their preparations before the research.
Without carefully prepared research, it is likely that the site will be unprepared for all kinds of emergencies.
From the perspective of dealing with a variety of user-dedicated and eccentric issues, there is no end to research preparation.
Good research preparation can include 18 aspects:
1. If any, read the business contract and technical agreement carefully.
2. Read the preliminary technical solutions and various memos.
This is very important, not only to read, but also to ensure that your work quality and specifications are consistent with those in the early stage. A company with high behavior consistency is a company with strong core competitiveness.
There is a very important task here to learn from the staff involved in the early stage whether some information has been collected and find a way to obtain it. The collected information and questions should be avoided as repeatedly as possible, this will cause great dissatisfaction to users. If you cannot obtain the information in the early stage, you should also prepare a statement in advance to avoid this situation.
3. Communicate with the project team (Consultant, Customer Manager, and platform supervisor.
Listen to their suggestions to make your research more targeted.
4. Familiar with similar projects implemented by the company.
Their enterprise business research reports and solutions will be very helpful for our current work, and even give us a lot of ideas during the survey.
5. Be familiar with the functions and development directions of related software products.
Many people do not pay attention to communicating with the planners during their work. In fact, they should confirm their understanding of the product development direction before the investigation, existing and recently implemented functions can be well understood when you encounter some technical problems that are difficult to avoid during the survey. Of course, it is best to say that we have implemented this function, which is also required in a certain project.
6. Understand the industry characteristics, competitive trends, and product R & D features of enterprises.
These companies, especially online data analysis, need to establish a basic business prototype. In this way, users can feel that we have done a lot of work and are very serious about the project.
7. Prepare the software prototype or communication PPT for communication with the user.
Sometimes the user puts forward a requirement for training and software demonstration during the survey process. In general, we should avoid doing this during the pre-sales survey phase, this is because the quality is higher after careful research and preparation.
However, during the after-sales investigation, we may first take the initiative to do this software demonstration and concept training, converge the user's ideas, and guide the project boundaries, therefore, the investigators should also make preparations for these aspects in advance. It is difficult to avoid this situation even before sales, not only to prepare, but also to differentiate the tone.
8. Prepare an enterprise business survey questionnaire. You do not have to give questions to users, but you can leave them blank.
9. design business research solutions. The Business Research solution can accumulate our own research experience to form a systematic experience. What we see now is the result of my continuous improvement of the Business Research solution.
10. Design a business survey plan. The plan must be carefully prepared.
11. Prepare business research and training materials.
During the on-site investigation, we need to let users know our research methods and ideas. Users can cooperate with us and recognize our degree of professionalism. This should be prepared based on the company's processes and experience.
12. Software Installation board and dongle. Be prepared.
13. Laptop. It farmers must use their laptops to solve the problem if they do not have them. McKinsey has been recording problems without a computer. Now they advocate hand recording because of convenience.
14. Windows, SQL Server, Oracle, and other commonly used tool software installation disks. It is useful sometimes.
15. Common examples and standard configurations for other projects. It is difficult for users to show their success stories in other enterprises when providing clear requirements, it also reflects the original intention of cooperating with users to bring advanced management methods and successful experiences.
16. Various process management documents of the company. When some users understand our company's internal problems, if they do not know what to say, do not open your mouth.
17. Training materials and problem sets that may involve business difficulties.
The user's questions are a bit strange. It is correct to prepare more. accumulating these questions is a process of improving individual knowledge.
18. Small company gifts.
After the survey is completed, a small gift is given to the survey object, which is a chance to impress the other party easily. If there is a policy, do not waste it.
In fact, every one of us who did the research asked ourselves, how many articles have we prepared for the survey?
It may be the root cause for the quality of a job.