Some time ago, I demonstrated our protocol system to an organization. Everybody was happy. The FC manager the HR manager the IT manager, even the General manager was happy (in organizations you have many managers). Except for one lady that was (of course) manager of the protocol department. She asked me a question: Do you think that you can have all these protocol books inside a computer? (I hoped she meant electronically). This is my work of years (20+) and nobody can do it.
So, let's start the project... but what is a project?
Organizations perform work. Work generally involves either operations or projects, although the two may overlap. Operations and projects share many characteristics; for example, they are:
Performed by people.
Constrained by limited resources.
Planned, executed, and controlled.
Operations and projects differ primarily in that operations are ongoing and repetitive while projects are temporary and unique. A project can thus be defined in terms of its distinctive characteristics—a project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service. Temporary means that every project has a definite beginning and a definite end. Unique means that the product or service is different in some distinguishing way from all similar products or services. Projects are undertaken at all levels of the organization. They may involve a single person or many thousands. They may require less than 100 hours to complete or over 10,000,000. Projects may involve a single unit of one organization or may cross organizational boundaries as in joint ventures and partnering. Projects are often critical components of the performing organization's business strategy. Examples of projects include:
Developing a new product or service.
Effecting a change in structure, staffing, or style of an organization.
Designing a new transportation vehicle.
Developing or acquiring a new or modified information system.
In life there many kind of pleasures. Name them... But one of them is having a special position in our mind. Chocolate! Milk, vanilla, ginger, black, coffee, lemon, cherry, strawberry... whatever combination you can imagine! Recently I ate duck with sauce of chocolate and balsamico, and it was delicious. And then, you can also drink it, with 40% of milk 20% chocolate and the rest 40% water... the perfect combination. So imagine now, you are in a snow shelter, and its cold outside. I bet the only thing that would make you feel nice... is a hot cup of chocolate.
So today, we reserved (thanks Markos) the domain www.ilovehotchocolate.com which will be the official name of this website (logo). The main reason that I did is because I trust that it gives a positive feeling. We all kind of want that to start our day. Don't we?
Yesterday was a nice day. I got to one of our customers, and I heard the following: you are great on support! I always smile, but that moment I felt proud of my partners, and I got a bigger smile!
Of course there is a special trick. We never leave more than 12h to respond to a case. We are not many (we will in time), but we are all more than able to be there, to understand and to control situations and bring the best outcome for both parties. Plus, we learn from our mistakes by first of all admitting that we do mistakes! There is a certain procedure that we follow on mistakes:
we identify the reason for that mistake
why we didn't see it
why we didn't avoid it (yeap it's different than the above)
what are the impacts - act!
what would be the best solution not to repeat it
And then after, we apologize to the customer/partner while we have already fixed (maybe spend a night) on it. I have been in situations that IT companies are trying to "blame" the customer somehow, that it was their (the customer's) mistake! Finally, those companies lost many of their customers.
So... be sincere, to yourself (company) and then to the customer and everything will run smoothly even in a crisis situation!
Yesterday, I had a nice discussion with one of our customers about brochures (finally today we finish ours). He has a lot of experience in this field. He discovered one ellement in our new brochure that I would have never seen. He said, your brochure has a unique style. We are not imitating any other company in the field. Of course we pray God to have inspiration... but it's true. When we started it we followed the workflow mentioned bellow:
Why do we need a new brochure? It's 2008 and the company is moving on, the 2007's brochure was nice for that year, but now we want to achieve more!
What will be the appropriate length for the brochure? I spent a night thinking of that. 2006's and 2007's ones where having about 5-6 pages. Is it what we need ? YES! Potential partners and especially customers will never read more (I wouldn't either!). They will be impressed, but never read it.
Do we continue wanting a new brochure? No... Simple as that. We will modify some pages and add some customers and we will PDF it!
What else do we need? A small booklet, for those that are really interested reading about Apogee's accomplishments and also for public procurements and tenders!
What will be the design? And she said "do a prototype in Microsoft Publisher". The what? Really, I only know Adobe Photoshop... What's that? I am telling you... without that, it would have taken ages to build it... (of course I rendered the images in Photoshop first!). We did the prototype, send it to some professionals to take feedback (I am talking about the first content page) and voila... it's almost done! 24 pages!!! (3 are blank).
In project management, to redirect your effort to another goal, it doesn't mean failure, but deep understanding of the situation and retaining the uniqueness!
