What does it take for your customers to love you? A great product? Great service?

We can go further and ask: do you want all your customers to love you? Without exception? How much are you willing to do get that result? It would take a lot of effort for all your customers to love you. Even if you have the best product and the best service, there would still be customers who would not love you.

I prefer to see things differently: make a product you love to use and like-minded customers will love you.

There is just too much diversity in this world to aim for 100% love from all your customers. Furthermore, setting unrealistic goals online breeds failures. And while one failure can be cathartic and motivating for a team, multiple failures are just demoralizing. 

How much energy are you willing to spend to make your customers love you?

I read an excellent post from Guy Kawasaki's blog, How to change the world. The post was an interview with Jerry White, the co-founder of Survivor Corps.  The interview focused on the art of survival. How do you go on after a tragedy, how do you move away from that event?

It made me think about the aura that failure can give you. When you project fails, you can surrender to the failure or move on, determined to make the next project a success. You can also choose to become a victim of that failure, a let it taint the next project with defeatism.

So, let's apply Jerry's recipe for surviving a failed project. 

Face facts.

The project has failed. There is nothing that can be done about it now. Don't try to blame circumstances or other people or anything that takes the failure away from you. You may not be the sole architect of that failure, but finding reasons to escape responsibility is not the way to go.

Choose life, not death.

Jerry talks about creating options for a positive future. Once you've accepted the failure of the previous project, don't let it slow you down. Let go of that failure and move forward.

Reach out.

Maybe you need to learn some new skills for project management? Maybe you need to improve how you manage your team, or how you manage expectations, or simply how you manage your time. Training sessions can only help you improve yourself, if only by giving you a confidence boost. Getting a mentor or a life coach can be beneficial too.

Get moving.

Get your hands on a new project. See it as an opportunity to start fresh. You can apply what you learned in your training or mentoring sessions. Most of all, working on a new project will motivate you. It will change your outlook, from being the one whose project just failed, to being the one whose new project will succeed.

Give back.

You're not only one who's failed before. When someone else has a failure on their score sheet, don't turn your back on them. You can become their mentor. You can offer them some guidance to move away from the failure and become better at project management. 

My take on it: it's about looking ahead

Recovering from a failure requires that you look ahead of you. You can't move forward when you're always revisiting the past. And if you're constantly thinking of that past failure, other people will see that in you too. The aura of failure is not put on you by the others around them, you're the one keeping it there.

Focus on how good you can be.   

I was reading this excellent post about being taken seriously and it made me realize how important it was to product management. The first element of David's post is about telling people what you have done instead of what you will do. It seems like common sense at first, but how many times have you talked about your product's future features? How great it is going to be?

What about now?

Your product should be great already. If it's sucessful now, it's because of what it is in the present, and not because of what it may become in the future.

I have too often seen sales people become caught up in the future of the product, and selling the product's next version instead of selling the product's current version. In a situation like this, the only thing that can happen is a sales rep who has to go back to the client and recant her promises. She will look bad to the client, and the company's image will also suffer.

Mind you, this is not exclusive to the sales team. Product managers also tend to live in the future, and will contaminate the sales team with their vision. It's OK to have vision. However you have to be careful not to translate this vision into promises that cannot be kept. What a product manager will want in her next product release may differ greatly from what actually comes out with the product's final version. And the product manager's enthousiasm is contagious.

Working on both the marketing and sales sides, I can understand how tempting it is to sell what's going to be in the software. So many clients will tell you "I would buy it if only it had this (insert feature here)." 

The fact is, there will always be something missing on the product. You will be better off learning to sell the product as it is now, than always living int he future and being disappointed when features get dropped from the release.

PITA is for pain in the a**. People who are PITAs really put a dent in any project.

How can you detect a PITA?

He/She focuses only on the negative aspects of the projects. What's going wrong, what's late, what hasn't been done correctly, etc. However, the PITA is not interested in solving those problems. All the PITA is interested in is to whine about the problem, and possibly blame somebody or something.

A PITA also tries to get attention like children do: by throwing tantrums, bullying and manipulating others around him or her.

When you habe a PITA in your team, it can be a weight on everybody's shoulders. It can significantly impair the project's progress.

How do you deal with the PITAs in your project team?

You must remember that PITAs are trying to get energy from you. Their screaming and crises and drama and blaming are all about getting people to feel sorry for them or agree with them or follow them in their blaming mission. As long as you're playing along, you're encouraging this behavior from your PITA.

Now, if the PITA is the project manager, it means the whole team is in trouble. It's harder to ignore the project manager PITA and work around him or her. However, it can still be done. If you don't give in to the PITA's behaviors, he or she may realize it's not working and try a different, les painful approach to managing the team.

If the PITA is a team member, it's easier to work around this person.

A good way to confront the PITA is to ask the question: What should we do about it?

Often, PITAs are not interested in solutions. After all, if the problem goes away, what are they going to complain about. Also, asking for a solution changes the mindset of the team, from focusing on the problem to focusing on the solution.

It's also a good idea to learn to build resistance to PITA behavior. The PITA is not working specifically against you, but against everyone in their environment. 

Watch out for PITAs around you

Whenever you have an opportunity to change teams or bring someone new in the team, keep and eye out for PITAs. It's easier to avoid having them in your team than getting rid of them once they are in. 

When working on a project, do you try to think about what could go wrong or do you wait for the problem to manifest itself before fixing it?

When looking back on your career, did you try to see or create opportunities for yourself and yor organization, or did you trust life to send you the right challenges?

When managing a product, do you try to anticipate where your users will have issues, or do you fix those issues as they are reported?

Does it have to be either/or?  

Think ahead: be proactive 

There are numerous benefits to being proactive. It avoid problems down the road. It minimizes the damages a problem could cause. It makes you, your team and your business look good. It's very trendy to be proactive. After all, it makes sense to solve the cause of potential problems before they spawn actual problems.

However, sometimes being proactive makes you spend too much energy on a potential problem which may not have the estimated impact. Sometimes, by trying to look so hard into the future, you end up neglecting the present.

A good way to be proactive when developing a new product is to look at the problems reported with previous version or even with the competition. Even though being proactive is about looking into the future and preventing problems, it can also be about learning from your mistakes and working to avoid repeating them.

For example, when we detect a problem with AceProject's hosted accounts, we will send the fix to all our source code clients, even though they may not be affected by the problem. Just covering all bases.  

Think now: be reactive

Being reactive had a bad reputation these days. It's seen as slow and not customer-centric. Waiting is not popular in 2008. However, going ahead of the customer's needs has its limits. Sometimes, no one could have guessed event would unravel in a certain way. Or that someone would use the product in that specific way.  Sometimes, only one person will have that problem. 

It's all about fixing the problem. If there is no problem, there is nothing to fix. In terms of customer satisfaction, fixing someone's problem may make you rank higher in their minds, because you fixed it. No because the product was perfect. Not because you foresaw every possible delay in the project. Not because you guessed when the time was perfect to send you resume. But because you were quick to react.

At Websystems, we make a point of fixing customer issues as quickly as possible, even if it's a small problem experienced by only one account. It's not the customer's fault she's doing something unique with AceProject. It's our responsibilty to ensure that AceProject works correctly for her too. 

The curve balls are always there

No matter how proactive you are, life will always throw you curve balls. Being reactive cannot be avoided. Reacting quickly and reacting well when a situation arises is as important as being able to see things coming.

Often disgruntled teams are seen as a negative thing: people are unhappy, their productivity is low and they won't be willing to go the extra mile for their project.

A nice bag a lemons, don't you think?

How about turning those lemons into lemonade, then?

Disgruntled workers are great agents of change. They are unhappy about they way things are now in the project. This means they will be more open to new ways of working.

Maybe they are unhappy because they feel isolated and not informed about the rest of the project. A project management tool where everyone can contribute and know what's happening can be presented to the team as a way to get the information they so crave. 

Maybe the team feels overworked and thinks management is insensitive to their needs. With a project management tool's time tracking features, they will be able to prove how much they are working on their projects. They can even track how accurate time estimates are to complete their tasks.

On the one hand, you have a team working with a tool that can help them solve their problems. On the other hand, you get metrics from the project management system, so you can prove them right (or wrong). 

Harness the energy

When people are unhappy about something, their negative energy (lemons) can be turned into a drive for change (lemonade). And people who feel they have some control over their environment are generally happier in their jobs.

And happy people work more, better and smarter.

Most of us have been in meetings that drag on forever: it seems nothing useful is said, and instead people are just repeating information everyone knows already. It seems like a waste of time.

Everybody dreams of having meetings that focus on the important stuff, what requires attention and decisions that need to be made. Especially in time-sensitive projects (aren't they all?), no one has time to waste in meetings.

Harness the power of reports

Instead of listing everything that needs to be done on the project, why don't you simply focus on what needs to be discussed? Late tasks and tasks that have been worked on in the last week, for example.

On order to do this without forgetting a task, simply 2 reports in AceProject: tasks with a due date in the past, and tasks with a last update in the same week.

With those two reports, you'll be able to only see the tasks that need attention. You can export these reports to Excel, print them or simply display AceProject on the conference room's projector screen. This provides a simple working list to follow in the meeting. And since all the info is entered directly on the task, no need to rehash it.

These simple reports will greatly speed up your meetings - and free more time for doing actual work

In life like in project management, stuff happens. People make mistakes. While some mistakes are stellar and go down in history, what most people remember about a mistake is how it was fixed.

You screwed up: admit it

In the end, the sooner you and your team can admit to screwing up, the faster you will get back on your feet. With a good strategy to correct the mistake and a plan to prevent it happening again, you are ready to get over the problem and move on.

...and get on with your life

When a problem occurs, one should react quickly and take control of the situation. One way to achieve this is to answer the questions below:

• What exactly happened? You should understand the sequence of events. If people are arguing over what happened, you need to come to an agreement before you can get to the next step.
• Why did it happen? This is not about blaming someone of something. It's about the cause. The cause is seldom a person. It's more often a action of decision or a failure to act.
• Could it have been prevented? Did you fail at communicating with your team? Is there anything that could have been done to avoid this problem?
• Could this problem happen again? This question is crucial. If the problem could happen again, you absolutely need to have a plan to prevent it from now on.
• How can you prevent this problem in the future? This is the opportunity for improving processes or creating new ones.
• Are apologies required? If you did something that affected your customers, your teammates or your organization, you should apologize for it. Recognizing a mistake will go a long way in improving your reputation and repairing the damage that was done.
• How do you correct the problem and reverse its consequences? This is the difficult question. Sometimes a mistake cannot be undone. If you annoyed your customers, you may want to give them a discount on their next purchase. If you slighted your teammates, you might want to treat them to a special snack or activity. By doing this, you are replacing the negative feeling you left in people's mind by a positive feeling that may stick longer than the memory of the problem.

The blame game: the best way not to fix the problem

You may have noticed "Who caused the problem?" is not in the list of questions. Finding out who's fault it is often a paralyzing endeavor. It seems, once we've found who made the mistake, everything stops. And often the correction is to avoid this person in the future. This is no productive, constructive way to deal with problems. If you do this with every problem you have, soon you won't have a team to work with. Understanding why the mistake was made will yield much better solutions than pointing the finger.

In the project management business, our market is the world. However, so is our competition. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of project management software products on the market.  Every week, I find a new competitor.

Project management software had become a sea of products. There are desktop software products, web-based products, open-source products, free products, very expensive products and everything in between. Ruby on RAILS was even invented to develop a project collaboration software. There are so many project management systems available it becomes overwhelming for those people who are tasked with the mission of choosing a system to manage their projects.

So, how can AceProject stand out against its competition? What makes AceProject remarkable, as Seth Godin writes it?

• Us. What makes AceProject remarkable is the people behind it. We believe in giving great customer service, before and after the customer has given us money. We believe we should make a product that people what to use. And we eat our own dog food: AceProject is also our project and product management system. So when something's wrong with AceProject, we see it as fast as our customers.
• The test of time. On the web, it's easy to start something up. As easy as it is to close up shop. Being around since 2001 makes us look like the older brother on our market. Being around since 2001 also give us the stability and experience many of our clients are looking for in a supplier. While most organizations are no longer shy about buying online or using a system online, they do want to be reassured that the company they trust with their data won't be gone next month.

It's finally online: you can use AceProject 4.5 online now! What's new? You can read the release notes here, but in a nutshell:

• New, cooler, shinier Gantt charts
• Dynamic templates
• Easier time sheets
• Better custom reports
• Skins

AceProject 4.5 took about 6 months to make, and we are very proud of it. I think it makes AceProject nicer to look at and easier to use, and that translates in happier customers.

Now that it's out, I can stop talking in the future tense when I give demos to future clients. A new version release always boosts my pride in AceProject, puts a spring in my step and my voice .

Now what?

On the development side, we get the great question: what do we do now? Which features are we going to develop? What's the next big step for AceProject? On the product management and marketing side, this is an incredibly creative period, where I feel anything is possible. It feels awesome. 

I can't wait to see what we will put in AceProject 4.6, which is due this Fall. 

Today I'm going to give a training session at an insurance company. I always enjoy giving training, because it shows me, in real time, how easy it is to learn to use AceProject. I like to see how new user navigate AceProject, where they click, how they make sense of the system. 

Here's why I like to give training: 

• It's great to be able to observe how our users really interact with AceProject.
• It's inspiring to see which questions the trainees ask.
• It's eye-opening when they can't fingure out something we thought was simple. 

When I get back to the development team, I can share this experience with them and we can focus what needs improvement, at the interface level and at the usability level. 

After all, we're making a tool for people to use. Giving training is a great source of user input. 

Tools are only as good as those who wield them. What good it the project management software if no one is willing to use it?

What does it take to convince a team to change its ways?

Patience

It takes a while to change a team's habits, and I have yet to see a team who is not at first put off by having to report to a system.

However, patience has its limits. If using the project management software is not enforced, it will be difficult for the team to change. 

If a new system is put in place to manage projects, one should make it clear that the data has to be up-to-date and the reports produced from the system.  

Support from above 

If management is truly supporting the project management software (and using it themselves), chances are better that the new method will take hold. Again, requesting that reports be produced within the system will get the project team to use the system, and learn to like it.

A good tool

Any tool has to bring benefits over the old method. Is it the email notifications? Is it the Gantt chart? Is it the ability to easily know how good someone is at estimating time for a task? If the team has something to gain by using the new tool, they will be more open to trying it. 

A team that works together

If your project team is at each other's throats and not working together, they are very unlikely to adopt a new method as team. You will have more success having a successful team use the tool first, to demonstrate its benefits - and get more people advocating in from the inside. 

Let the good times roll!

Any tool can have a very positive impact on a team. However, tools cannot perform magic. When a team is broken, no system or software can replace some good old people management. When a team works well together, a good tool like a project management system can make a world of difference.

I remember that first term paper I had to write when I was in school. It seemed so long! How could I ever have 20 pages to say about any subject? I felt overwhelmed by the size of the task. I think the teacher saw the same look of discouragement on all our faces, so she gave us a hint: make your table of contents first.

When I sat down to make my paper's table of contents, I realized I wasn't going to write 20 pages on the same subject: I was going to write 4 4-page sections on different aspects of the same subject. This was much easier to deal with, in terms of planning my work and feeling more in control of the paper.

The same happens when I have a huge project to work with. For example, with the release of AceProject 4.5, which is almost ready, we had to plan for documentation, promotional material, web site updates, email blasts, etc. Taken together without any structure, I felt like there was too much work and I was going to either be late or forget something.

So I created a project in AceProject. In this project, I created a task group for each part of my project: Documentation, Web Site, Announcement, Email campaign, Logistics. Each of these task groups contains all related tasks. This way, I can easily focus on the Documentation tasks without feeling overwhelmed by the other parts of the project. It feels a lot better.

What's also nice about structuring my project this way, is that I can know how many hours I've worked on each part of the project, and then plan ahead next time. For example, if it took me 20 hours more than planned to complete the email campaign, I can use this data to estimate my time better for the next AceProject release.

Small chunks are easier to process

It all comes down to how much you can chew. When the project feels too big, people will tend to procrastinate because they are afraid of it, or don't know where to start. A big project can simply be broken down into smaller, more manageable pieces. 

Vague deliverables make everyone unhappy. They create misunderstandings and unfulfilled expectations. They tarnish reputations. 

Projects should always have clear deliverables. Too often, the project's deliverables are so vague that no one can agree that the project is complete.

Take software development for example. If the project's deliverable is the new version of that software, the project manager should be able to spell out exactly what constitutes the new version. Is it the Beta version? The Release Candidate? The Gold Master? The first client installation?

Moreover, it should be clear who accepts the deliverables. Should the development team decide when they're done? Should QA sign off on the new version? Should management, sales or customer service have a say in it?

Without a clear deliverable, there's the inevitable gap between what the project team thinks they should deliver, and what the project's client expects. 

But how can one get a clear deliverable from the project client? Often, the project's client, be it management, the market or an actual client, has a hard time expressing what they want precisely.  It's up to the project manager to provide a clear deliverables list on which both parties can agree on. 

The project's preliminary task list can serve as a good basis for the deliverables. Which features should be included in the software? Which bugs should be fixed? This is a good starting point to answering the who, what, where, when, why, and how of your project:

Who decides when the deliverable is ready?

What will the deliverable include?

Where will the deliverable be provided? Online? As a hard copy?

When is the delivery planned? Is there any leeway in this date?

Why are we even doing this project? This serves as a good reminder of the project's objectives.

How will the deliverable be produced?

If it's hard to answer all those questions, or if your client refuses to answer some of them, you should be worried.

Do you remember the last time you shopped for a car? As you get in the dealership, you start looking at cars in the showroom. A salesperson helps you out, answering your questions and guiding your choice for a new car. Once you've decided what you wanted, the pressure is applied.  As you are sitting at the salesman's desk, you hear the fatal question: "What would it take for you to buy this car today?"

Why? Why would I need to buy the car today? If the car is so great, and the deal I'm offered is so good, why can't I sleep on it? Or shop around some more?

The answer is in how much confidence the salesperson has in the product.  If the sales person has enough confidence in their product and the deal they have for you, they will have no problem wishing you a good day and waiting for you to return to buy the car. If the confidence isn't there, they will want to seal the deal as soon as possible, before you have the time to change you mind.

You will see these two types of sales online: the hard sell (buy now!) and the soft sell (take your time).

At Websystems, we prefer the soft sell approach.  

We know we have a great product. And we prefer to have customers that took the time to make sure AceProject was right for them before committing their money. This is why we have a free trial of the AceProject available online. People don't need to call us or email us to setup their free AceProject account. They don't need to give us a credit card number. No one will bother them while they try the new system.

When they are ready to get a paying subscription, we are more than happy to count them among our customers.

In fact, we encourage our clients to purchase a package that fits their needs now, and upgrade as they grow. There is no sense in buying more licenses than required, since upgrading later is not more expensive than purchasing the full licenses now.

Our results?

Happy clients, with more money in their pockets. Clients that don't feel ripped off.

And the feeling of doing business right. :-)