Mike Wyatt's Weblog

Great Expectations

One of the folks on my staff asked that I talk about Expectation Management or the lack thereof in Identity Management deployments. In my entry on the Cone of Uncertainty Uncertainty is typically highest at the beginning of the project. The early coversations during the sales cycle for the solution can have lasting effect - positive or negative - on the customer's expectation for the solution. When I worked at Tivoli, we used to have a saying, "Never confuse Selling with Installing." This is something that customers should keep in mind as well. We all realize that a "perfect fit" solution is as ellusive as the fabled Unicorn. As professionals, we need to present our solutions in the best possible light without creating a situation where the customer feels like they were sold a "bill of goods." Areas of risk of inappropriate expecation setting include:

• Level of Effort to complete the project

• Project Duration

• Customer resources / time commitment required for the project

• End user experience using the end solution

• Skill set of the person or team that will have to support the solution after the production

• Level of effort to create or "tailor" a resource adaptor or connector to connect to a managed system

• Level of effort to change default out of the box capabilities to customer specific use cases

• Price of the professional services to implement the solution

It is far easier to set the right expectations up front than to reset them during the actual implementation project. As software implementation specialists we are obligated to balance the need to get the sale with the need to set appropriate expecations for the project. Here is a brief article on facilitating Expectation Management from a Datamation article.

Posted at 12:42PM Nov 10, 2006 by Michael Wyatt in Identity Management  |