How can you effectively manage a pilot project with a customer?

4. Establish effective communication channels: Set up regular communication channels with the customer, such as meetings, emails, or collaborative project management tools. Keep the lines of communication open, providing updates on progress, addressing concerns, and seeking feedback. 5. Track and measure progress: Implement a system to track and measure the progress of the pilot project. Regularly evaluate whether the project is meeting the objectives and make adjustments as necessary.

6. Collect feedback: Actively seek feedback from the customer throughout the pilot project. Encourage open and honest communication to understand their experiences, address any issues or concerns, and make necessary improvements. 7. Document and analyze results: Document the results and findings of the pilot project, both quantitative and qualitative. Analyze the data and evaluate the success of the project based on the defined objectives. 8. Learn and iterate: Use the pilot project as a learning opportunity for both your team and the customer. Identify lessons learned, strengths, and areas for improvement. Implement these insights to refine and enhance future projects.

One question I like to ask is this. "If you had this capability or information, what would you do with it?" Who needs it? What decisions will they make? How will those decisions make things better? If you can't get good answers to this, you don't really have a north star or even a project.

What will the scoreboard be? What is success? How will it be measured? These should have been defined right at the beginning. If you don't have agreement on the definition of success and how it will be quantified, you can expect difficulty getting past the pilot. Knowing the scoreboard will also help your project team stay focused on what is important and not be pulled into distracting "wouldn't it be cool if..." kind of stuff.

It is often hard to get a public testimonial coming out of a pilot. You do need as many internal testimonials as you can get to use as part of your closing arguments to move past the pilot into a real deployment.

While there are a good few points I could say in detail, I will keep it brief to the obvious ones at the front of mind. -Set clear expectations on both sides. -Have success criteria defined before any commitments. -Have pre-planned check in meetings in the schedule with agendas set from the success criteria. -Gain some sort of soft commitment at the very least, before beginning a pilot.

Qualify, qualify, qualify. It is easy for a customer to ask for a pilot. They may even ask several companies to compete. For the vendor, the pilot requires serious commitment of time and resources. If you don't know how or why you expect to win (i.e., key needs or differentiators) and you don't see the buying path or budget, should you be spending your time?