In this episode, hosts Merv Jersak and Tim Jerome discuss the pursuit of value when delivering results for your customers. They consider the importance of aligning project goals with meaningful business impacts and the personal needs of team members and stakeholders. Through topics like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, stakeholder satisfaction, and overcoming challenges such as resistance to change and sustaining commitment, the hosts share practical tips and strategies for project managers to ensure successful project delivery that resonates functionally and is pleasing to your end-users. The episode underscores the significance of early communication, requirements gathering, and continuous improvement in realizing long-term project success.

Main Take-Aways

Project leaders have an incentive to deliver value to their stakeholders. Some thoughts on the pursuit of value:

• providing meaningful business impact
• understanding organizational needs
• personal needs fulfillment
• aligning project value with organizational values and business objectives
• delivering customer-centric solutions
• long-term sustainability
• continuous improvement
• measuring value delivered
• challenges to implementing value and mitigating those challenges
• sustaining team member commitment to delivering value

Show Notes

Today’s Project Managers Coffee Chat: Leaders Pursue Value

00:27 Pursuing value in project delivery means providing meaningful business impact, understanding and meeting organizational needs.

01:51 Pursuing value also helps fulfill the personal needs of team members and stakeholders.

03:29 Aligning project values with organizational values, taking into account not just functional values but also emotional values of the team and stakeholder community.

04:12 As professionals, you have the obligation to guide your customers in achieving the best value from the product you are delivering, to align results with business objectives.

07:22 Taking a customer-centric, human-centered design approach often results in satisfied customers, end-users.

08:54 Pursuing value in long-term sustainability of the delivered product benefits your customers. Designs with continuous improvement in mind add to this value.

11:04 Measuring whether you have provided value can be determined from post-project assessments, customer response, return-on-investment analysis, and comparing what was delivered to what was requested.

12:56 Challenges in implementing value include resistance from individuals within the organization, change (disruptive to the status quo), ambiguity in goal setting and translating executive objectives to the project team, inadequate communication, misaligned results when compared to organizational values.

15:19 Participating in the up-front analysis to gather organizational needs and understand objectives can help mitigate challenges to delivering value over the life of the project.

17:33 Sustaining commitment in longer duration projects helps deliver value through ongoing reminders of the project objectives.