What is the essential ingredient for a successful project? You may be surprised to learn it is having a value conversation. Ed Kless says you can be so good at having a value conversation that project management becomes irrelevant. Before a project begins, you need to ask the customer why the project is important and what success looks like.
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Episode Highlights
- Value pricing is a methodology for pricing in which the primary, but not sole, determinant of the price is the value to the customer.
- The most overlooked pricing question is What is the next best alternative for the customer?
- If you suck at what you do, you should continue to bill by the hour–because you're transferring all the risk back to the customer.
- A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result.
- The Triangle of Truth is an equilateral triangle with scope as the first angle, resources as the second and time as the third.
- Time is a constraint, not a resource.
- All project changes should happen before the fact, not after.
- How much is this going to cost? is the wrong question to ask. The right question is What is the value of this?
- If you get really good at having a value conversation, you can suck at project management and still be successful.
- If you're a project manager, you have a right to know what the value to the customer is and why it is a valuable.
- What is the #1 mistake that people make in project management? Not understanding the value to the customer.
- Efficiency is doing the thing right. Effectiveness is doing the right thing.
- Time as duration is way more important than time as effort.
About Ed Kless
Ed Kless is the Senior Director of Partner Development & Strategy at Sage Software. He is a Senior Fellow at VeraSage Institute and co-host of The Soul of Enterprise podcast. He ran for the Texas State Senate in 2010.
- EdKless.com (Blog)
- @EdKless (Twitter)
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