Anteriorly, in the 1st Part of the present series we used to totalize all the project management roles and described in more details the Project Manager role. In the 2nd Part we contemplated the Project Team Member role and the Project Sponsor role. And in this Part the Project Customer role will be studied in details.
The main purpose of the project of any kind is the gratification of customer’s needs and requirements. The project customer is the beneficiary of the results of the project which are defined as ultimate deliverables. It is necessary for the project customer to inform the project team with his demands and requests in order to receive the desirable deliverable. This measure is necessary in order to make certain that the ultimate deliverables meet the demands of the customer.
A project customer may be either outside or inside the company. Large amount of software projects are executed for those customers who are inside the company, albeit the ultimate deliverable which have been created during the project can be also sold to or acquired by an outside customer. Assume that you were working over creation of the innovative heart monitor for babies within the confines of the project.
In this case, the project customer of your production is the section of marketing of your company for the reason that mainly this section has the duty to promote your product to the clinics who are the final buyers. The babies who are the patients of such clinics and will be connected to these heart monitors should be defined as ending utilizers of these monitors. (Ending utilizer can be considered the final consumer of the product).
Alhough a great number of projects are executed for the customers who are inside the company, such inner consumers often introduce the demands of the consumers and ending utilizers who are outside the company. And a certain number of projects are performed immediately for the outside customer. In such situation, the project customer ordinary pays money specifically for the ultimate deliverable. As instance it is pertinent to mention a project in a company which provides consulting services. Within the confines of this project this company elaborates a customized part of software for a consumer outside this company. The outside consumer will pay money for the period and the required stuff or just fixed payment for the software project. Both types of project customers in the – inside and outside – have quite similar roles within the scope of the project:
- Providing the information to the project team about their demands and requests;
- Consideration and confirmation of the statute;
- Taking part on the team of the project when required;
- Providing the intelligence about any modifications in the close quarters situation which are able to influence the ultimate deliverables of the project;
- Confirmation of the modifications within the software project when necessary in order to provide a successful execution of the project;
- Consideration of the status project records;
- Rendering periodic back coupling to the Project Manager;
- Estimation of the ultimate deliverables and the whole process of the project.
- Consideration and confirmation of the whole plan of the project (Outside consumers ordinarily consider just the scope paragraph of the project plan)
- Consideration of the ultimate status record
The customers inside the company can likewise play several supplementary roles:
In the case when there is a online collaboration software development project with an outside consumer, it is really essential to have an inside sponsor within the framework of the project. The project scope of the work for this specialist is to equilibrate the demands of the outside consumer with the requirements of the inward company. In the case when there is an inside consumer, the inside consumer is able to act also as the project sponsor.
In the next part, we will study in details the Project Functioal Manager Role.
