property management cotati, ca that focus on the needs of the customer generally have more successful outcomes than those that focus on the product itself. So the desire to keep a client happy is paramount to most project managers – they know that the client will have to sign-off on the completed project and if they are not satisfied with the end-result then the project will not be deemed a success.
But on the other hand a project manager also has to keep a tight grip on finances and the project schedule, which naturally means controlling requests for change. If the scope of the project starts to diverge substantially from the original requirements then the client may be happy with the end product but they will certainly not be happy with the budget and/or time over-run.
So how does a project manager put the client’s needs first when they want to change details of the project part-way through the schedule but still manage to deliver a quality product on budget, on time and within scope?
Project managers regularly face this challenge and their skills in managing people, budgets, schedules and deadlines are all vital at such times.
Clients do not always appreciate the consequences of a seemingly simple change. When a change is requested once the project is already in progress it can be much more costly to implement than if it had been built in at an earlier stage. Project plans usually have many tasks running in parallel and often have complicated inter-dependencies so any change can result in huge risk to the successful completion of the project.
But it would be naive to assume that change never happens in a project or that requested changes are always trivial to implement, which is, of course, why change management is considered such an important part of a project and the ultimate responsibility of the project manager. Project managers who are used to dealing face-to-face with clients know that it is simply not acceptable to turn down a change request without an extremely good reason that can be backed up with facts.
