“Scope creep”

“Scope creep” and misunderstanding about what is and isn’t in scope for a consulting project seems to be a key issue for many projects.

A key reason for this is not _truly_ understanding what the requirements are, especially during Discovery stage.

To do this well, you need to know how to ask the right questions to elicit insightful answers, and to be able to listen actively.

Socratic questioning will help shape the discussion to be structured logically. Doing so tactfully will gently help probe statements that may not be based on strong foundations of #criticalthinking.
This will result in conversations that are of substance, and the outcome for a Discovery session.

Emotional intelligence comes to play here, so the ability to #listenactively in order to read the room and energy, as well as to get a sense of underlying social and political group dynamics will get help you get an understanding of what’s said and what’s not said.

So many Consulting Partners focus on the hard skills like the Salesforce Clouds, Microsoft Dynamics that are exciting and sexy, and really fun to learn and apply, but so few pay attention to the more boring parts like understanding and writing requirements.

Most of the time the “boring” digging for foundations and and brick laying is what underpins a strong and stable structure to build the fancy building on.

Sometimes boring beats sexy.
This is one of those times. 😍

#onthepeiroll
#salesforce
#projectmanagement