« Understand What An Infrastructure Project Is
The Technical Requirements Specification (TRS) in Web Projects »

Negotiate Achievable Commitments

August 10, 2008 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Project Management Best Practices, Project Stakeholder Management

Negotiate Achievable Commitments (#5 in the series 21 Project Management Success Tips)
By Karl E. Wiegers

Despite pressure to promise the impossible, never make a commitment you know you can’t keep. Engage in good-faith negotiations with customers, managers, and team members about goals that are realistically achievable. Negotiation is required whenever there is a gap between the schedule or functionality the key project stakeholders demand and your best prediction of the future as embodied in project estimates. Principled negotiation involves four precepts [Fisher, 1991]:

  • Separate the people from the problem.
  • Focus on interests, not positions.
  • Invent options for mutual gain.
  • Insist on using objective criteria.

Any data you have from previous projects will help you make persuasive arguments, although there is no real defense against truly unreasonable people.

I once met with an aggressive and intimidating senior manager to discuss our department’s software process improvement plans. Jack was eager to see our department achieve CMM Level 2 by July of 1996. My process improvement group had carefully studied the problem and estimated that the end of 1997 was the earliest date that was even remotely feasible. After some debate, Jack grudgingly agreed to the end of 1996, but I regarded even that goal as pure fantasy. After additional discussion, I finally said, “Jack, I’m not going to commit to the end of 1996.” I don’t think anyone had ever told Jack he wouldn’t make a commitment that Jack demanded. He wasn’t sure what to say next. Jack eventually agreed to the target date to which I was willing to commit.

Plan to renegotiate commitments when project realities (such as staff, budget, or deadlines) change, unanticipated problems arise, risks materialize, or new requirements are added. No one likes to have to modify his commitments. However, if the reality is that the initial commitments won’t be achieved, let’s not pretend that they will up until the moment of unfortunate truth.

Adapted from “Practical Project Initiation: A Handbook with Tools” (Microsoft Press, 2007). A condensed version of this paper was published in Software Development magazine.

Karl Wiegers, Ph.D., is Principal Consultant with Process Impact, a software process consulting and education company in Portland, Oregon. Karl’s most recent book is “Practical Project Initiation: A Handbook with Tools.” Karl is also the author of four other books and 170 articles. Karl is a frequent speaker at software conferences and professional society meetings. You can reach Karl through www.projectinitiation.com or www.processimpact.com.

Share this article:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Google
  • blogmarks
  • LinkedIn
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • TwitThis
  • Yahoo! Buzz

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 10th, 2008 and is filed under Project Management Best Practices, Project Stakeholder Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

No comments yet.

feel free to leave a comment

Comment Guidelines: Basic XHTML is allowed (a href, strong, em, code). All line breaks and paragraphs are automatically generated. Off-topic or inappropriate comments will be edited or deleted. Email addresses will never be published. Keep it PG-13 people!

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

All fields marked with " * " are required.

Project Management Categories