Heightened Business Partner Demands Underscore Need for Precise and Thorough Project Scoping

As a startup, your firm is blessed with young, brilliant, and technologically-adroit employees. These employees have essentially grown up online and are accustomed to a technology experience that is characterized by high functionality, ease-of-use, and speed. And these expectations will inevitably carry over into their day-to-day routine on the job.

There was a time – say, 10 years ago – when in-house applications, say, a customer resource management system – were pretty simple. No bells and whistles, no “cloud,” no integration with social media. But times have changed, and these heightened demands are placing additional pressure on already-strained project management offices.

So it’s important to get the first phase of any project – project scoping – right. It’s important for IT not to over-promise, not to say “yes” to every outlandish (and potentially costly) business sponsor request. It’s important for IT to embrace its role as, essentially, a service provider to “the business,” but not as a mere utility. And lastly, “the business” must view IT as a strategic partner.

If these initial steps are mishandled, the whole project is doomed.

Tags | project management, project scoping, startup