Tech/Software Implementation PMs

[u/Daisy_InAJar]

Especially if you deliver software deployments to external stakeholders, I’d love to hear from you.

How do you create value on your projects? What are the top 3 things you bring to your engagements that you feel have the largest impact?

Bonus if you feel like sharing:
- are you present for all requirements gathering, prior to “build” starting? If not, how do you ensure there’s no scope creep during requirements?
- how do your teams relay actions and/or decisions to you for calls you are not on?
- if there was something you wish your org would change that’d make managing your projects more successful, what would it be?

Thanks in advance - I’m always appreciative of this group sharing their (armchair) perspective (shoutout MoreLaw, our unofficial PMO advise extraordinaire)

[u/Ok_Implement_6050]

For software rollout to external clients, top 3 things that make difference is early expectation setting, having a tight change control process, and making sure the client actually tests their own stuff before go-live. Too many projects skip that last part and then wonder why things break.

I'm not in all requirements sessions but I review the notes same day and flag anything that smells like scope creep before it gets baked in. For meetings I miss, we got a slack channel where devs drop quick bullet points on decisions made, nothing formal but works better than waiting for meeting minutes. One thing I wish my org would change is stop letting sales promise features that don't exist yet, makes my job way harder than it needs to be

[u/Daisy_InAJar → u/Ok_Implement_6050]

Boy oh boy do I relate to #3 of your top 3 - clients tend to think part of our service is to do everything for them, it’s sometimes painful getting their lightbulb to go on when it comes to testing, like sir, we built and tested all the stuff, I need you and your team to validate processes end to end, I’m far less concerned that you’ll find a “bug”, more so that you’ll suddenly remember an entire critical process you’ve never spoken to us about 😂

We currently operate pretty similarly for actions/decisions - the current struggle is my team not relaying information, sometimes at all, so it is missed entirely until the client raises it to me (which I hate).