TABLE OF CONTENTS For any project, there must be valid justification (i.e., a good business reason) to go forward and make it successful. The problem that many Project Managers face, however, is seeing eye to eye with users on the business fit for a project. Sometimes, this is a very easy task, and the business reasons are readily apparent; however, there are often situations when a business unit leader may not see eye to eye with the project leader on the business fit. For example, the EVP of sales at Company X believed their current sales booking software was too cumbersome and said it prevented his sales force from booking revenue properly. The VP of IT saw the problem as one of capacity and felt like additional hardware and bandwidth would fix the problem more than implementing new software. The CEO, who was always open to ways to get more revenue in the door, wondered if the solution could be found in taking both of these actions.
In this case, the perception of revenue booking being hindered had driven answers from the executive leadership that failed to account for the real problem, which turned out to be a lack of adequate training for the sales force in using the software. In this particular situation, the company could have spent several million dollars upgrading hardware and software, and, in the end, would have accomplished nothing. The key point here is that before you find the reason for the...
