Last week, Team Behr presented our project charter to our contact, Lisa. It was gratifying to hear how impressed she was with the work we've already done, and what we propose to do over the next few months.
Lisa seemed happy with our charter, but she felt the need to present it to her colleagues at the Behr innovation team. This makes total sense, but it also reminds me that we aren't working just for Lisa. We also have to meet the needs of dozens, maybe hundreds, of people at the client organization.
Our calls with Lisa take place in a bubble, where we discuss our progress and ask our questions with just her. Outside the bubble are all the people she has to answer to - not to mention Drew, who we must keep updated on our progress (and who we will meet for our first review meeting this coming week).
Outside the bubble constitutes another source of ambiguity, and it's also been our first source of variability. Lisa wrote back and asked us to update the charter with an additional goal for the research - something that hasn't been a big focus in our conversations with her, but that is listed in one of our modules, and that one of her teammates thought should be included in the charter. (I'm making it sound like scope creep, but it's really not - just something we would probably have included in the final report anyway as part of the analysis, and now it's in the charter explicitly.)
Lisa is great, and our conversations with her have been going really well ... but we can't lose sight of the fact that we aren't the only ones with a stake in this project. This week has reminded me that we have to satisfy our client both inside and outside of the bubble.
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