Managing Complexity
By: Natalie Verheggen, Clever Franke
Tags: Project Manager, Project Management, Digital Project Manager, Scrum, Digital Design

How to manage projects with no predefined outcome?

Natalie Verheggen — Project Director at CLEVER°FRANKE

Every agency has their own approach to creating solutions for their clients. Some may be fairly straightforward or follow the usual beats expected within a project; for instance, creating an e-commerce site generally has some must haves. Others wade through muddied waters; you know you need to reach dry land at the end, but until you do, you try to find a solid path that supports you through to the other side.

Most large-scale projects also bring complexity with them. This can stem from dealing with cross-disciplinary teams, cross-sector clients and emerging technologies that you may not fully grasp, or from the process itself and having to define a trajectory without knowing all the steps upfront.

In this article I will share a few insights I’ve learned through the years, that help to manage complex projects and environments to achieve the right solution for the client and, ultimately, the end user.

No need to be brief

As data and technology proliferates and penetrates every aspect of today’s businesses, our clients will often approach us with data they’ve collated over the years and ask us to ‘do something’ with it. They may not have a clear idea of the solution they want, but may have an idea of what they want solved, and it’s our responsibility to get to the bottom of that. Without a clear objective you might spend a lot of time solving the wrong problem.

Between the lines of every brief lies the real issues that every client is pleading for you to solve by providing a solution to ease their woes. What they formulate on paper may not necessarily be what they envision in their minds. Getting to the core of what really pains them, and the solution that will actually make an impact for them, requires hard work, patience and diligence.

You need to thoroughly interrogate the client (and ideally their end users) to get to the bottom of their wants, desires and needs, and define an end goal that captures that as closely as possible.

You need to manage the client’s expectations of what is feasible, what they want to achieve and what the outcome will be.

This is not a quick process so make sure there is enough time in the project scope to really delve into this and enough flexibility to change direction if the brief changes based on this investigation.

And one more thing: don’t forget to also consider what your team’s goal is. An internal vision helps drive ownership within the team. Speaking of teams …

Build the team you need, with the expertise that’ll get you to your end goal

Once you have an end goal in mind, you’ll need to assemble a team with the right expertise that’ll be able to build what you need. Complimentary disciplines, which support each other’s work, help guide the process naturally through their synergy and collaborative natures. They are able to maintain focus on the best desired outcome for the client while also ensuring alignment with the agency’s own needs.

Build buy in early by sharing the project goal and exploring together the best way to tackle it. Allow for fluid collaboration, with shared working spaces, walls for project documentation and regular touch points.

This collaborative approach is an attitude you should train your team in over and over again so it becomes part of the agency’s culture.

Creating the framework

Flexibility is key to creating a process that will work moving forward. You don’t want to have clearly defined steps that are later deemed unnecessary or unrelated to everything you’ve accomplished up until then, but you do want to guide the process and have contingencies in place.

Having a clear project framework sets the path and stops the team from reinventing the wheel each time they start a project. But allow for flexibility: the framework should be a guide but activities within it should be adaptable.

Experiment early on

Give room for creativity and experimentation in the project plan. Allow the team to uncover new and impactful ways to address a brief, from data, content and technological perspectives. Especially when working with new technologies or unclear data sets let your team prototype as much as possible early on. You want to weed out the solutions which aren’t going to be relevant to the project, and double down on the elements that show promise. Facilitate collaboration with the client to make sure you’re leading your team down the right avenues and exploring paths the client is comfortable with.

In trust, we trust

Part of dealing with the uncertainty of projects that don’t have a clearly defined product at the other end, is giving yourself over to trust. A way to gain trust is by continuously iterating on the framework you use to factor in unforeseen events as much as possible. But eventually the most important thing; you need to trust in the skills and capability of your team, allowing them the freedom to follow their ideas. Trust = freedom.

You also need to trust in your own instincts; that you have what it takes to put together the right team, the experience to lead them, and the courage to make those bold decisions. Doubt is a natural part of the process, after all you’re dealing with a lot of uncertainties, but focus on the certainties that you can place your trust in.

To allow your team to thrive you also need to build trust with the client. Involve the client along the way, build their confidence that your team is an expert partner and be clear on deliverables and expectations. If the path needs to change you want the client to be right there with you.

Milestones vs. deliverables

During the exploration phase, teams may follow divergent paths. You need to set the parameters of the project and the constraints, know how much leeway you can afford them, and when you need to corral them back on track to focus on moving forward.

To maintain productive forward momentum, focus on the milestones you want to achieve along the way. Setting deadlines and deliverables may sound logical, but if you don’t know what the final outcome will be, it can be devastating to a teams’ moral. By focusing on achieving certain elements by a set milestone, you mitigate this deadly trap. The client has to understand this and shift his focus from deliverables to delivered ‘value’ for their end users.

Track progress but focus on feedback

A check list is great to have but if you’ve gathered anything from the above, it should be that as a ‘PM’ you’ll need to fight your natural instinct for control and replace it with an open, flexible mindset that is comfortable with a dynamic process and the uncertainties that arise. One way to make sure you’re on track with client wishes is to take them along with you in the process. Incorporate a frequent feedback loop that acts as the checks and measures you’d usually have in place. Managing expectations, meeting desires and gaining client buy-in of the process/solution/outcome can be a more powerful means of validation than a standard, rigid checklist. Build in contingency in planning to allow for new, more fruitful paths to be explored without a change request around every corner.

Conclusion

The digital landscape is continuously changing and there’s no end in sight. A mindset and attitude equipped for change and uncertainty, with confidence in one’s leadership, the team and the process, will overcome the challenges every agency will face in the years to come and drive the delivery of real value to the client and their end users.