Managerial thoughts

1st BEST PRACTICE - Ensure that the customer's requirements are well understood 

1. Analyze your customer’s requirements to better understand their needs. This is the first preventive action you have to take within your company to ensure the success of the project you conduct.  It allows you to examine the feasibility of the customer's request and to ensure that you have in your company the necessary skilled resources to meet all the customer’s requirements. For that purpose, you have to answer the following questions:

a) Did we understand the customer’s requirements? This is the first question you have to ask yourselves within the company. If so, you will proceed directly to the next question (b). If not, you have to communicate and to exchange information with your customer until you ensure that the requirements are understood within your company.

b) Do we have the necessary human and material resources to meet the customer requirements? If not, could we acquire the missing resources to complete the project on time and with the required quality? In case of doubt, you have to communicate and to discuss this with the customer. There are two alternatives in dealing with this issue.

- You notice, after clarification provided by the customers and or by reviewing some of their requirements that you already have or you can easily acquire the required human and material resources to meet the customer’s requirements. It’s good to go and start the proposal process.

- You notice that despite the discussions conducted with the customer, you don’t not have or you cannot acquire on time the necessary human and material resources to meet the customer’s requirements. You have in that case to give up and to stop the proposal process.

2. Draft the proposal is another activity that you have to organize before submitting it to the customer. It ensures that your proposal will meet the customer’s requirements. It also ensures that the agreed deadlines for submission are respected.

- Establish the plan for preparing the proposal;

- Define the tasks to be carried out in order to prepare the proposal

- Assign tasks and deadlines to each of the persons in charge of responding to the customer's request;

- Review and evaluate the responses;

- Consolidate the content of the responses into one proposal;

- Revise the proposal and make the appropriate corrections if necessary;

- Submit the technical and financial proposal to the customer.

3. If your proposal is accepted by the customer, you will move forward. Otherwise, you have to analyze the reasons for the rejection of your proposal and you have to take action for your future submissions (lessons learned).

3. This way of doing business allows you to gather the best conditions for the success of the project you will conduct and thus guard you against possible misunderstandings of the customers’ requirements. The satisfaction process of your customers starts with an exhaustive understanding of their needs.

Notes : Whether the design and development project request comes from an external or internal customer (company management), this 1st step should be conducted by the business development manager and the designated project manager in association with all those stakeholders of the design and development process .

2nd BEST PRACTICE - Associate your customer in the major events of the design and development projects

1. Plan the activities of the design and development of the project

a) Define the role and responsibilities of each stakeholder in the design and development of the project to ensure that all the scheduled activities will be completed;

b) Determine and allocate the required resources to ensure that the design and development activities will be completed on time and with the quality agreed with the customer;

c) The planning activities ends by drafting and sharing with your customer  the following documents:

- A detailed schedule defining and assigning the roles and responsibilities of each stakeholder in the design and development activities;

- A development plan defining the methods to be used, the stakeholders, the steps to follow and the tools and the environment in which the product will be developed;

- A quality plan defining the methods, the tools to be used, and the points of the quality control as well as the evaluation and the management of the results of these points of control. 

      You want more about this article, click here:  Best pratices for conducting DDP