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The Royal Academy of Engineering and the British Computer Society asked Project Managers, “What are the common issues and challenges that lead to project failures?” Seven of the top 11 issues occur at the time the projects are assigned or delegated. These 7 issues are:

• Unclear goals and objectives.
• Poor communication of those goals and objectives across the team.
• Poor – or lack of – measures on project performance.
• Unclear responsibilities.
• Poor – or lack of – planning.
• Poor integration of suppliers and management.
• Lack of ownership and responsibility.

Does this sound familiar? I’m sure that most of us have seen these same issues time and time again in every industry. It happens with our teams whether we’re writing code, building houses, installing an HVAC system, or raising money. These are not just internal issues either; we find the same issues when dealing with our customers as well. 

Several years ago, the company I worked for made a major sale to an airline, convincing them to switch to our system. (I was in the Global Reservations System industry.) Our sales force did an amazing job convincing this forward thinking airline that we were easy to work with and had everything they needed. We were all proud of their work.

Fast forward several months later when my team was in the testing phases with this customer on our application. The client was NOT happy! Our system did “nothing” that they expected. They expected something very similar to what they were leaving. We were delivering what we did well. Those 2 items were not the same.

At this point in time, I was told to meet with the customer (my first direct interaction with them). After spending a day with them learning what they expected, I realized two things:

1. Our sales force had sold them exactly what we do. They had not lied nor misspoken.
2. Our customer had bought exactly what they wanted. They heard everything we said.

So why was there an issue? Because neither side had asked clarifying questions. When a statement was made by either side, the other heard it in their context and it satisfied them. But what they didn’t realize was that each others' context was totally different – they were coming at the same solution from completely different viewpoints. So as reality hit, the miscommunication became obvious.

Take a look at the list above again: we (both the customer and us) failed on 3 of those 7 items. We had unclear goals and objectives; we had poor communication about those goals across the teams; and neither of us took responsibility or accountability to make sure we were all on the same page. If either of us had taken it upon ourselves to accomplish even just one of the three we messed up on, things would have gone much better.

After we realized the issues, we were able to come together to solve this in a satisfactory way for both of us and we only had to delay this for a month or two (which wasn't bad considering the effort). And we ended up with a positive relationship.

Your call to action: Look at that list of 7 and eliminate as many of them as possible. You will have a much better chance of getting it right the first time and trust me, your life will be much easier

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