One of the Business Guide series of the Project Manager: Preface and project nature (Agile development, customer, communication, and remittance)

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• A project is a mutually beneficial transaction.
• The customer finally buys the software value.

This is the first article in the Business Guide series of the Project Manager. (1) preface and project nature; (2) Recognition of responsibilities; (3) Understanding of customers; (4) Understanding of negotiations; (5) Understanding of project progress; (6) Understanding of remittance; (7: push the project to an unbeaten position)

The gradual upgrade of programming languages leads to the gradual merger of demand analysis and architecture design, and more flat development methodologies such as agile development lead to the project team to directly deal with the customer's business processes and business personnel. In this change, project managers will increasingly need to master some business knowledge, rather than sticking to the previous textbook's understanding of progress, quality, and cost.

This will be covered in this series of blog posts.

CONTENTS AND CONTENTS

• Preface and project nature
• From the perspective of the project manager, the project is often a battlefield of game and confrontation, and both parties did not initiate the project because of the game or confrontation. This chapter will return to the project start point to explore the project values that both parties shall share.
• Understanding responsibility
• Software Project Managers are often considered to be internal managers who focus on four dimensions: progress, quality, cost, and demand. They are not responsible for negotiation, remittance, and customer relationship maintenance. In fact, as early as the negotiation period, we reached a preliminary consensus on the future internal management requirements. The implementation of these preliminary consensus is closely related to the future customer's collection and relationship progress.
• This chapter analyzes why traditional project management content and business communication content should be integrated from the perspective of equal responsibilities and rights, and its impact on the future career of project managers.
• Customer Recognition
• This chapter analyzes the customer's attitude towards the "project" from the customer's perspective, and reveals the reasons behind the "incomprehensible" actions of the customer during project negotiation, quotation, execution, and acceptance; understanding this is a prerequisite for cooperation with customers rather than confrontation. At the end of this chapter, we will also provide some skills to master the basic techniques and techniques for dealing with customers.
• Understanding negotiation
• This chapter analyzes why the customer is tough and hesitant during the negotiation from the customer's perspective, and reveals the "passive" Status of the customer in the early stages of the project. If you can understand the actual difficulties and core values that customers encounter in the project, and place them on the same side of project management rather than on the opposite side, it is more likely to achieve a win-win situation with customers.
• Understanding project progress
• This chapter analyzes the progress, quality, cost, needs, and changes in the customer's eyes from the customer's perspective, and then explains how to visualize the customer's project status, and how to make the customer trust that the project is progressing smoothly.
• Recognize remittance
• This chapter analyzes the customer's understanding of how to pay back and what actions and results can help the customer settle the payment with confidence. The primary problem facing a project is to switch to the customer's perspective to understand the definition of project completion, rather than sticking to the definition in R & D management.
• Push the project to an unbeaten position
• This section describes the possible development paths of projects from the perspective of project management, and the possible status of projects on these development paths. From the business point of view, some of these statuses can be attacked and retreated, which is an unbeaten place for the project.

Project nature

In the eyes of project managers, projects are often the battlefield of game and confrontation with customers.

When a speaker from a top international company asked them how to handle frequent changes, he replied, "We will sign a very tedious change process when we sign the contract, each change process has 40 links and can last for up to one month. Therefore, most customers have abandoned unnecessary changes." When talking about agile development's "Embracing Change", the most frequently asked question is: "What if the customer's needs change constantly, resulting in project delays and overspending ".

Why did Party A invest trillions of dollars, and why did Party B invest hundreds of thousands of people to create a game and confrontation battlefield? This is certainly not the original intention of the year.

The following content requires developers to make some basic ideas from the perspective of Party. The simplest way is to assume that you want to build a house and get into the theater quickly.

A project is a mutually beneficial transaction.

In fact, it is the same as the items we purchased,The Basic Property of a project is transactions. We exchange what we are good at and what we are good at in exchange for what the other party is good at. After the entire process is completed, both parties will make profits; whether the price is higher or the price is lower, the status after the transaction is always better than the status before the transaction.

With this basic understanding, we can establish a correct understanding of some phenomena.

For example, "Customers propose a large number of changes without adding money" should not be considered as "Customers intentionally propose a large number of changes without adding money to take advantage of us ", it should be understood as "due to some restrictions, customers need more benefits and cannot win for us."

What is the difference between the two?The former has no solution, and the latter has a solution.. There is a saying that we are afraid of good people without fear of good deeds. The former is not good, but the latter is not good.

As for how to solve the problem, we will discuss it in later chapters.

The customer finally buys the software value.

What does this mean? For example.

The two software companies share the same number of people and develop exactly the same things. One company has 100 sales + 100 developers, and the other has only 200 developers. What about the first annual meeting? There should be companies that sell very well, because they can sell 100 yuan of things to 200 yuan and earn 100 yuan. Companies that do not sell, despite the large number of people, the created software is worth twice, that is, 200 yuan, but they can only sell 210 yuan and earn 10 yuan.

However, 10 years later, the value gap of the software came out. The former software has already been worth 1000 yuan, and the sales staff can sell it to 2000 yuan to earn 1000 yuan. However, the latter's software value is 2000, which only sells 2100, earning 100. Who has many customers? Of course, it is the latter. because of the long time, the two products have such a big difference and the price is close, and customers cannot turn a blind eye.

The latter customers will go straight up, and the software has a feature. When only one product is sold, the cost is very high. The cost is calculated as 2000, but when two products are sold, the cost is almost zero, the second 2100 was net profit, and immediately surpassed the first company.

If the first company has sales staff and has a good relationship with the customer, will it win the market? Yes, but not many. The customer's decision makers do not rely on the purchase relationship to establish a foothold in Party A. Sooner or later, they will provide Party B with more value.

What do we learn from this? That is, at any time,The so-called business, negotiation, game ...... These activities are only ancillary products of project management activities. Normally, what wins the interests of customers and even Party B is to deliver valuable products to Party. Therefore, do not put the horse upside down.

The resulting inference is the core purpose of business, negotiation, and game. It is to ensure that the interests of both parties are maximized and do not hold a zero-sum mentality.

By mastering these two main elements, we can maintain a correct mentality in the process described below.

 

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