Wie gehen Sie mit der Unzufriedenheit Ihrer Kunden um, wenn Projekteinschränkungen es verhindern, alle ihre Anforderungen zu erfüllen?

Avoiding surprises is the most important so communicate regularly, show data and be specific on rationals why it cannot be achieved.

We all have a car that we want, and it’s rarely the one that we need. We all have a salary we want, but most of us get the salary we need. Dissatisfaction often occurs because at the start of the process the seller didn’t work with the client to get them from want to need. Exploring ‘implications’ of issues with the client at the front end will help you establish the true need and significantly lower the risk of dissatisfaction further down the line.

-Speak to the elephant in the room. Address the tension between the requests and excellence in delivery of those requests. -Then, 1:3:1. 1= clarify problem (clarity in "what is the problem" is half of it), 3= offer 3 possible solutions, and 1= your recommendation.

Strategies that help me manage stakeholders expectations include: 1. Open and transparent communication. By keeping stakeholders informed about project progress, constraints and limitations helps manage expectations. 2. By being open and transparent, more robust conversations can happen with stakeholders to then prioritise requests. 3. Work closely with the development team. For most constraints, there is a possible alternative solution that can be help achieve a similar outcome.

Selon moi, l’empathie et la transparence sont essentielles si l’on veut sincèrement reconnaître les préoccupations de nos clients. Une règle de base simple à retenir : puisque nous avons 2 oreilles et 1 bouche, il faut simplement les utiliser dans la même proportion… c’est à dire d’écouter deux fois plus que l’on parle !!!

In my experience communication with key stakeholders is crucial. You should consider in your communication plan keeping these stakeholders always in the loop and periodically set a meeting for updates. Now, you are in this situation. So, you need to prepare yourself with all the information and clear impacts that these constraints affected the project (in which ways). Gather the scenarios, information and your solution plans. Be very clear to communicate what happened but also involve them in the solution ahead. Prioritize the risk so you only focus on the most critical ones with high impact.

In the kick-off meeting the milestones and deliverables should be clearly specified, along with what will be considered out-of-scope. Without having such clarity in the project initiation phase, clients will feel justified to add ongoing requests to the workload. If there are minimal requests, that do not represent strong deviations in terms of time-cost-scope, then some can be met. However, if a request represents a strong impact of one of the 3 principles, the consulting leadership needs to be honest about the impact that added scope could have on delivery and team. Massaging the truth will not work and neither giving in to requests that burn out the consulting team, which will eventually impact the project delivery in the next phases.

Open Communication: Keep the client informed about the project constraints and the reasons behind them. Transparency helps build trust and understanding. Document Everything: Keep detailed records of all communications, decisions, and changes. This can help avoid misunderstandings and provide a clear history of the project’s evolution.

Before you can clearly communicate project constraints, you first need to assure you fully understand the risk parameters and mitigations based on their Impact and Likelihood levels. Projects have general Communication Plans which should articulate communication and escalation paths based on the subject matter at hand. This has been a standard on my project scope of deliverables. Depending on the impact potential, Project Management Groups and / or Project Steering Committees will be engaged early into the process to avoid reactionary decisions.

Provide options as well as explanations for why something cannot be done. A good framework for this is Situation, Complication, Options, Recommendation.

This is the most important step where we can win the confidence back. It's very important to realise where it went wrong and provide alternative to catch up or atleast avoid further delays. Catch up plan should be shared with the client with prompt monitoring system so that deadlines are met & flaws are not repeated. Frequency of client communication also to be increased.

It is natural for consultants to want to try to please the client as much as possible to ensure an extension of the project. In the past here are some of the alternatives we were able to provide clients: for training requests we researched and compiled free tools or trainings that achieved the desired results without having to build everything from scratch; for extra staffing requests, we were able to reallocate project staff from lower priority milestones to fulfil the client’s needs. In offering alternatives, creativity and tapping into the wider consulting organization is key. There should be no reason to not try to come up with alternatives as that is the main job of the consultant - to solve problems.

One of the most important characteristics and capabilities of a project manager is creativity and initiative to find alternative solutions. A professional project manager can gain the trust and support of the client by demonstrating her/his abilities in practice.

We should always think why a client comes to us? It’s obvious that for solution, isn’t it? . No one wants to go empty handed, so it’s better to provide something instead of nothing. In my opinion, always strive for workaround which would fully or at least mostly fulfil the requirements. A single technology might not full fill the requirements, so try clubbing multiple technologies or workaround to achieve it.

While it is often in our nature to want to "fix things," the acknowledgement of current reality is a powerful tool. After listening to and deeply understanding the client, it is often true that you can find a creative and collaborative solution. While the client may want X and that may feel like the priority, if we work backwards to discover the expected impact of X, can we find another approach which reaches the same end? For example, so many times, clients wanted dozens of interviews even when the project timeline didn't permit. Can recordings of a few very good interview be sufficient to convince your team it is time to change? Does increased transparency bring more impact in this situation?

At the start of the consulting relationship, establish a few ways of working. For example, how much interim work do you prefer to see? How much rationale to provide in recommendations? If priorities change that may impact scope, how do you prefer to address? It doesn’t have to be comprehensive list, but a few key points to set the stage on ways of working. It acknowledges that if things go a bit off course, it’s not a cause for panic but rather each side committed to talking it through and coming up with a new direction forward. If you acknowledge upfront that things don’t always go exactly as planned but you are committed to finding reasonable solutions together it builds a sense of “together we’ve got this!”.

Coproduction is so important to understand what works and what doesn’t and collective analysis of the information. Bring open honest and transparent has to be there too and welcome varied solutions and explore options and the impacts of those options is critical.

This is the core principle. While you may have done some analysis, diagnostic deep dive and option development as a consulting project team as soon as you have facts and insight you need to get the client involved.

Engage the client in the problem-solving process. By involving them in discussions about potential solutions and trade-offs, you not only leverage their insights but also foster a sense of ownership and collaboration. This can lead to more innovative and acceptable outcomes.

Open communication from the very beginning is one of the most important things. Problems in any client engagement are bound to happen. Having open discussions focused on pros and cons helps build trust. Clients know that if you are brave enough to call out the issues then there is nothing being hidden that they will have to deal with later. Sometimes we can be pleasantly surprised as well - I have had experiences when on a client engagement, my team thought an issue was catastrophic- when we presented to the client, it turned out to be a non-event because of a nuance with their business that only they knew about. Nothing beats an open and honest relationship with the client!

Set Realistic Expectations: From the beginning, ensure that the client understands what is feasible within the given constraints. This can prevent disappointment later on.

Mutual understanding of the expectations, constraints and values of the client and the project manager at the beginning and during the project execution is a necessity. The interactions between client and project manager cannot be fully described by the cotract terms and conditions. The art of the project manager is to create an effective and win-win interaction within the contract framework.

Tactical empathy is understanding the feelings and mindset of another in the moment and also hearing what is behind those feelings so you increase your influence in all the moments that follow.” – Chris Voss If you’re leading such an effort, take this quote to heart. It can’t be fake in anyway, you have own customer satisfaction and that means you’re really good at active listening. So consistent communication is not enough, one must listen. Successfully active listening takes work, practice, preparation and the follow-up needs to be the answer to this question, “What does this customer want?” If you can’t honestly answer that with depth, you’re not listening.

You can manage stakeholder dissatisfaction when project constraints prevent meeting all requests: 1, Acknowledge concerns and prioritise key aspects based on business context 2. Facilitate dialogue and actively listen 3. Communicate/collaborate frequently 4. Offer alternatives and involve stakeholders 5. Manage expectations, track progress and adapt continuously

You can manage stakeholder dissatisfaction when project constraints prevent meeting all requests: 1, Acknowledge concerns and prioritise key aspects based on business context 2. Facilitate dialogue and actively listen 3. Communicate/collaborate frequently 4. Offer alternatives and involve stakeholders 5. Manage expectations, track progress and adapt continuously