Project Manager experience-project summary meeting

Preface: Summarize the project summary meetings that have been attended, and put forward two ideas, three preparations and four steps here to benefit more people.

Two points of view
I. Different project acceptance criteria determine the progress and difficulty of project acceptance. It is the primary responsibility of the project manager to make project acceptance as soon as possible.
The larger the project, the more standards and details of acceptance, and the larger the amount, the more people involved in acceptance. Under the pressure of who signs the project and who is responsible, if you don't want to sign the project first, the project acceptance criteria become unpredictable.
Finding problems that are not suitable for acceptance criteria in large projects is equivalent to targeting the earth on which we stand. Because the customer has a set of acceptance standard documents and procedures that even sell hardware, not to mention Software acceptance. If it is implemented in accordance with the customer's requirements and standards, the Team will continue development for another two years, but it cannot be guaranteed that it will pass the acceptance test.
Therefore, the acceptance of large projects usually involves three points of human feelings. The project manager should do a good job in the relationship with the customer at ordinary times. Both parties can have a solution acceptable to both parties on the acceptance criteria, and work together to do a good job. If the project manager does not do well, although the customer also has a responsibility, however, your company has to spend a lot of time and resources.

2. The project summary meeting is the key and stepping stone to determine whether the project can pass the acceptance test smoothly. You must seize this opportunity and do not fight unprepared battles.
Project Summary meetings, as the name implies, summarize the work of the Project, what has been done, what has not fully met the customer's needs, and what has not been completed. Because the software runs for a period, the demand will come up with more and more perfect requirements based on the user's usage. Similarly, it also makes the project cycle longer than we thought during business negotiation.
Due to reports on business contracts and project team work, if it is recognized by the customer, software functions have been implemented within the scope currently proposed by the customer, the project summary meeting is likely to become a stepping stone for project acceptance, at least for the Project Acceptance, there will be a very good psychological expectation, let the middle and lower personnel of both sides in the next work, all work centered on project acceptance will facilitate smooth transfer of project work to the acceptance period.

When conditions are met, the project manager must prepare three aspects for the meeting and strive for a good result.
1. comprehensive understanding of the project
It is hard to imagine that a project manager who does not know the project process and work can host a project work summary meeting. The project acceptance process is like a chain ring, with one set. If any of the loops has a problem, the entire chain is broken. Because too many details are involved, and you have not answered any of the questions asked by the customer, it is difficult to ensure that the customer will make the meeting result as expected.
Therefore, before the meeting starts, the project manager should be very clear about the customer's concerns, the project team's completion, and customer satisfaction in this project, in particular, the customer leader's satisfaction level. And the extent to which the project is implemented, the customer's thoughts and attitudes during the project.
On this basis, we assume that if the customer's satisfaction with us reaches a certain level, we need to understand which business will be the customer's key concern at the beginning of the formal meeting, the customer's attitude and limits on these concerns should know in advance what the customer will do, which will give you an outstanding experience at the meeting.

2. Know the characteristics of participants
In the project implementation process, you should pay attention to the collection of basic information about the customer's people. For example, if someone is very cold in asking him to sign, he is very afraid of taking responsibility. Someone is better at speaking, and someone is realistic, someone is very concerned about the details, and someone has a general idea of the project, etc. Usually pay attention to the collection of such information, which will always make your project run smoothly on certain occasions.
After you know the customer's information, you should try to understand the work arrangements of the customer during the day of the meeting, and try to have the project-friendly personnel participate in your project summary meeting. Never meet a person who can help you speak and has a high weight. When you make an appointment on a business trip, all your plans will be disrupted.
At the same time, you must consider people with low project satisfaction, especially those who are hostile to the project. The sooner you get to know the cards that people like this can play, the more favorable your project will be. Even if someone in the customer speaks for you, as long as someone holds an objection, as a colleague in the same company, the customer still helps his colleagues, not you.

Ii. Determine feasible objectives
If you do not participate in project meetings without topics, you must have a clear theme for each project meeting, even a project meeting. If there is no target meeting, everyone will pass the meeting. In fact, it is a waste of time for both parties, and it is also the responsibility of the Project Manager.
At the same time, on the basis of understanding the project process and status quo, according to the characteristics of the participants, set practical goals and the minimum goals you want to achieve, and take the lowest goals into the meeting room, discuss with the customer on this basis. High goals and expectations can be achieved only when the customer recognizes your work and your company recognizes your work.
Similarly, when reporting to your leaders with a lower achievable goal, the leaders will be happier if they have achieved good results after the actual meeting. On the contrary, if the expected goal is too high, but it is not actually achieved, it is hard to imagine how you want to deliver to the leadership.

Project Summary formal meeting
I. Summarize the project process realistically
This is an opening remark. You can also place the second point at the beginning based on your habits and on-site conditions.
When summing up the project process, we should pay attention to the major aspects as much as possible. We should talk more about the advantages of the project, and do not talk about the unpleasant aspects of the project, at the same time, avoid focusing on the details of the meeting. Do not forget to mention the help of the customer in the project process, especially when their leadership is present. Seeking truth from facts but not forgetting the methods.
In the project summary process, we need to emphasize the key milestones, the contributions made by both parties, the changes made by the customer staff, and the hard work of the process, it may be of great benefit to the meeting process. The running status of the software must be reported. We should talk about the overall situation, because we can talk about the details for three days if they are not satisfied.

Ii. Clarify the completed and unfinished work of the project
Any project can never be completed. Even if all the projects are completed, it cannot be perfect, and it is even less likely that the customer will be fully recognized. Therefore, the completed work must be emphasized, and the unfinished work should still be put forward, because the unfinished work mentioned at the conclusion meeting will gradually become undefended, it is easy to reveal their true thoughts. Similarly, they will not be put under acceptance pressure, although our purpose is to accept.
In the same way, it is best to show which customers are recognized in the completed work to avoid them from playing football in order to take responsibility and play football with each other, this will make the meeting smoother and pave the way for achieving our expected goals.

III. Exploring the virtual reality and attitude of the other Party
the highest goal of the project summary meeting is to pave the way for project acceptance and to guide the project, therefore, you can understand the customer's attitude when you view the customer's summary of the project process and the report on the unfinished work at the project summary meeting.
at this time, the customer will inevitably talk about his or her views based on certain issues in the project process. At this time, it is necessary to avoid disputes with the customer, we should put forward it in a more euphemistic way to make the customer feel that we have made great efforts, and the results are still good in general. We can say that we should keep the customer's face in front of the customer's colleagues.
if the customer does not disagree at this time, it indicates that the customer is acceptable to the project as a whole. If the customer still cannot accept this, he must explain the problem to the customer again to make sense but go beyond the scope of the project. If the customer has a large objection to this, it is necessary to argue with each other based on the customer's face, preferably by lower-level personnel, this allows the project manager or higher-level vice president and general manager to have a wider room for maneuver.
if some customers impose almost rogue or demanding requirements, the person with the highest position on the site must come up and give criticism and comments to them, because they will not stop it at this time, even if the customer's colleagues understand this situation, they will not make a different voice to help you speak. On the contrary, if senior personnel speak, A customer's colleague, especially a person with a higher position, will help to stop his requirements. If a customer with such unreasonable requirements is a project manager or a higher position, then the customer will go to the site, the middle-and lower-level personnel, including the project manager, have to make preparations for better competition with the customer. At this time, the bigger the problem is, as long as it is reasonable, although the personnel will change, however, the project acceptance will be completed faster than all expectations, even this week.

4. gradually achieve the goal based on the current situation
the project summary meeting is not a project acceptance meeting, so it is especially taboo to use such words as signature payment for project acceptance, we cannot express this mentality at the beginning of the meeting, unless the two companies have a very strong relationship, and the other party is very willing to accept the project in the near future, otherwise, the project Assembly will make the two sides hostile, and the customer will begin to defend against you because of the words you said, and resist the project situation you mentioned everywhere, and the meeting will fall into a detailed debate, this makes the meeting hard and all expectations are hard to achieve.
in the beginning, you must hide the target. After understanding the customer's attitude and bottom line about the project, you can determine the customer's acceptance of the project based on the atmosphere you have led, decide what you can achieve. If you feel that the target customer cannot agree, do not mention it. Therefore, at the scene, we can only make the best use of the situation and propose acceptable requirements from the other party to ensure that the meeting will be rewarded.
Based on the on-site situation and on the basis of achieving the initial goal, the customer will gradually agree with your point of view without knowing it, customers who are insufficient in the project may feel excited and understand it in their hearts. As long as they do not fall into details, the expected goals of the meeting will be recognized by the customer very naturally, because as long as our project is in place, the customer will not deliberately embarrass us. They also hope that the project can be accepted, especially before New Year's Day and Spring Festival.