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com/fr_FR/slides/slide/some-project-how-to-s-1205

Why this task?

We realized that at the beginning, new Project Managers have difficulties developing good
reflexes that would avoid them falling into common traps.

In this task, you will find tips and tricks on how to handle a project properly.

How to handle it?

Read the documentation below and then discuss it with the consultant during your session.

Try out the tips learnt and see how they can help you on a daily basis.

Documentation

How to prepare and handle my calls?

Before the call

To organize a call, you need to make sure you have defined a planning. This planning should
be aligned with the current phase. It should not be too precise (ex : no need to write down all
the configurations you want to show to the customer). But not too blurry either (ex: “phase 2
configurations” is not precise enough). Do not hesitate to send this planning to the customer
beforehand.

Here is an example of a good call planning :

Data import training : contacts

Data import training : products
Odoo getting started : general configurations + users + companies + using the chatter

Then, make sure that you are ready for the main configurations of the Apps you will talk
about. To do so, you can go through the mind map or you can go through the checklists of
the apps.

Take +-15 minutes before the call to remember what the project's situation is what you need
to talk about.

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During the call

Never forget that you are the one that drives the call: If the customer asks you about
something that is out of the scope of the planning, you do not have to answer it. You can
keep it for later and write it down in the call meeting minute in order to not forget it. Always
remind the customer that we work phase by phase and being structured is important.

Do not be ashamed to say that you don’t know: “You work with a good consultant, but he
is only human ”. If the customer asks a question for which you do not know the answer, you
basically have 2 options :

You have no clue of the answer : Say that you are not 100% sure and you will double
check before sending the answer by email or giving it during the next call.
You are close but not 100% sure : Say that you are not 100% sure and propose to the
customer to test in live.
Bonus : You are close but not 100% sure + the question is short and clear + you have
a colleague nearby that does not seem to be busy: ask 2 minutes to the customer,
switch off your microphone and go ask your question to your colleague. Cross your
fingers for the colleague to find the answer and come back proudly in your call.

Never bullshit the customer because it will backfire at you as fast as you can say “Oops”.

It is not your fault when something cannot be done with Odoo. If the customer seems
unsatisfied for this reason, never take it personally. Propose a workaround instead ;)

Go through the planning step by step.

Write down a to-do list for the customer as well as a to-do list for yourself. Writing down
to-do lists afterward is prone to mistakes. Do not hesitate to ask time to the customer so that
you can write down the requirement properly.

Define the date and the planning for next call.

After the call

Write down the Meeting Minutes of the call and send it by email to the customer. Here is the
structure of a good meeting minute :

Reminder of the projects phases and project situation (which phase is in production,
which one in progress).
Summary of the call.
To-do list of the customer.

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 To-do list of the consultant : this one is useful to inform the customer about what you
plan to spend time on. If the customer disagrees with a specific point, they can just
answer the mail saying “do not spend time on this point”.
Planning of the next call.

Writing down the Meeting Minutes can take between 15 min and 1h. Meeting Minutes are
crucial for the project to run smoothly so no guilt about timesheeting it! Of course, most of the
MM should be written during the call, it is more efficient.

Here is a template of a Meeting Minutes.

Try to estimate the time your to-do list will take, and book a schedule in your agenda where
you will go through it. Already book an expert or a consultant slot if you think you will need
help with an advanced requirement.

That’s it! You can stop thinking about this project for now and focus on the next one.

When going through the list, write down the answers in the Meeting Minute document or
directly send an email to the customer.

Some more tips about handling calls

1. Send your Meeting Minutes from a projects task to have a centralized follow-up.
2. Avoid setting more than 1 call per half/day. Having 2 calls following each others with no
time in between is tiring and you might not be focused enough for the second one.
3. Avoid planning calls longer than 1h30. After 1h30, either you, or your customer, or both
will lose focus and patience.
4. The ideal situation is to work on your call to-do list just after the call. The information is
fresh in your head. To do so, try to set your calls at the beginning of the morning or at
the beginning of the afternoon. 1h30 of call + 1h30 of working on the call to-do list.
Soooo smooth. But it’s not always possible.
5. Ultimate Tip : try to avoid scheduling calls on Friday afternoons.

How to organize my planning for the week?

Always remember that you are the one and only responsible for your agenda, not your
client.

Save some time before and after the calls. Stick to the initial duration of each call.

Use colors to have a clear view of your agenda.

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Ex : Blue for meetings with customers, Green for internal meeting with colleagues, Red for
meeting with yourself. Agendas always need to be rescheduled and using colors help you
see in one blink what you can move with not too many consequences.

(In Google Calendar) Right click on the meeting to give it a color.

Always keep buffers. Try to have at least 1h per day where nothing is planned. This buffer
will allow you to treat a customer emergency, help a colleague with a question, …

Remember that you can and should say no to a meeting schedule if it does not fit your
agenda. Saying yes to everything and then not being able to follow your engagements is
worst than just asking someone to change a meeting schedule. And if there really is no way
to find another slot, ask someone to record the meeting and just follow it afterwards (if you're
not the meeting leader obviously).

Calendar apps, such as Google Calendar, have a lot of advantages. Such tools have several
purposes:

Check the availability of your colleagues.

Send an invitation to your customers with a Google Meet link.
Check who i s in charge of other activities (like support rolling day, presales,...).
Book a meeting room.

But it is most of all a tool we usually use for our self-organization.

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How and when to communicate with the salesperson?

1. At the beginning of the project : plan a Sales Kick Off with the salesperson as we saw
in an earlier course item.
2. When something goes wrong : When your customer complains about something, the
salesperson can play the role of mediator and talk to the customer. When you feel like
something is about to turn bad, always inform the salesperson before the customer
does. This way, when the salesperson talks to the customer, they are aware of your
side of the story and they can balance the story version of the customer.
3. During project status: just put the salesperson in copy of your email so that they are
aware of how the project is going.
4. Before the go-live of a phase.
5. If an unexpected development is needed.
6. When an upsell is needed : Try to identify as soon as possible when an upsell will be
needed and inform the salesperson so that they can get in contact with the customer.
Try to start the upsell process when at least 10h remain on the pack.
7. When you put the project to support : send a final email to the customer and put the
salesperson in copy.

How to properly document my project ?

As a project manager, documentation is key to keep an eye of every aspect of your projects.
It becomes more important as you manage multiple and various projects at the same time.

In order to keep your project documentation up to date and easy to read for everyone,
you can create a Project Folder Template. This template should provide useful standards
files every project could have:

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Here are the steps to set up your workflow :

Create your Projects folder. This folder will contain every project you are currently
working on.
Create a folder for each project you have.
Within each project folder, copy and paste Project Folder Template files.
Rename your files with the name of your clients.
Follow the steps 2 , 3 and 4 for each new project.
That’s it ! You are ready to go.

How and when to make a proper project status?

How

In a project status, you are supposed to analyse if the project is going well and if the full
implementation will fit in the time you have left on the project.

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If it is going well, just remind the customer of the project phases and the remaining
hours/days. Congratulate them for the job already done. Never promise that no
extra hours will be needed, but say that the project is on a good track.

If you feel like you will need more hours/days :

Explain why : customer takes time to make decisions? Too much focus on details ? Too
many customizations ? Business flows turn out to be more complicated than what you
identified at the beginning ? Customer does not always do their tasks ? A development
is finally needed ?
Propose improvements for the remaining time : more focus on the core business
needs? Respect to do lists deadlines? Do not come late to a call anymore?
Try to estimate the number of hours needed for the new pack.
End your email by reassuring the customer : it certainly does not mean that we will not
make it, it just means that it might take more time.

When

Project status frequency depends on the initial duration of the project. For a 25h/50h project,
just make a project status after 50% of the pack was consumed. For projects of more than
50h, you can make project status after 25%, 50% and 75% of the pack was consumed.

Obviously, you can make project status whenever you feel it is necessary. For example,
when a development was done, when a phase has just been put in production, when you
feel the customer is loosing the big picture, etc.

How and when to make a proper project status?

A project in good health is always aligned with these 10 commandments :

1. The roles and responsibilities are clearly defined between project stakeholder (Project
Sponsor, SPOC, AM, Odoo PM).
2. The customization level is sufficiently low to implement the project on the Saas.
3. The project scope is ALWAYS covered by the contract (subscription + pack).
4. The communication strategy is well defined with my SPOC.
5. Every time I know when & why I meet my client.
6. I know where the project comes from, where it goes and how to carry it out.
7. My approach is aligned with my client hard and soft skills.
8. At every moment, I know what THE CUSTOMER AND I have to do.
9. My timesheets reflect the history of the project.
10. When asked about your project's precepts, your client(s) will give the above elements.

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and the extra 11th one: If it stinks, I ask for help and receive it.

How to escape tricky questions?

During a call you will surely face some tricky questions of your clients. Imagine you have just
received your first project and the clients ask you when you started working at your company.
Clearly, being prepared for these kinds of questions will help you to create a trust relationship
with your client but also make you feel more comfortable to deal with any situation. The idea
here is to help you give good and clear answers to your client by giving you some tips and
tricks but also some examples of questions that you might get with some good and concrete
answers.

If you receive such a tricky question from one of your clients you should not lie so the main
idea here is to always keep in mind the potential reaction of your client and to stay
professional. Based on this, you can elaborate your answer accordingly. Also, always
prepare your calls, anticipate and ask your clients to send their questions in advance in order
to be as ready as possible to answer their tricky questions.

You will find here a list of tricky questions and answers. Have a look because they will for
sure help you at some point in time. Why not start from this one and create your own list and
share with all your colleagues?

How to optimize the time spent on the customer?

As you already know, we timesheet all the time worked for a client. We do that when we
analyze their business needs, configure their database, import their master data and when
we call them or do some project management. Nevertheless, there are some good ways of
optimizing the time you spend on the customer consulting days/hours and that is what this
section is for. It will help you to get the best out of these days in order to efficiently bring the
implementation of your project to a good end.

There are a lot of ways of saving time consumed by delegating tasks to your client. Of
course, do not forget to adapt your way of working depending on your client's capacities.
Hereunder you will find a list of different examples of how to save time:

Refer back to y/our documentation. The Odoo documentation is very complete,

standard and comprehensive for the client. Part of it also exists in different languages
which could be interesting if you have a project in a different language.
Refer back to a forum entry. The forum entries are a gathering of all Odooers
knowledge and contain more specific information that could be useful for a consultant
and his client. For example, steps to follow when importing the initial accounting
balances.

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 Refer back to the e-learning platform or e-learning Youtube channel. These are the
videos that you have watched yourself during your onboarding that can be very useful
for the client as well.
Refer back to your own e-learning on your website (you can create specific courses per
client thanks to our e-learning app)
Create specific training videos for the client's specific business flows (using
Screencastify or another feature). Creating these video's yourself in the DB of your
client might help your client in case they forget how to do something or for them to train
their colleagues. These are also videos that are more concrete and close to the
customer's business flow so they are always very practical for them.
Record your meetings. In the same idea as for the previous videos, it allows the client
to go back to what has been discussed and rewatch some explanations given by you.
Refer them to y/our support team for a functional question of a previous phase, for
administrative questions, bug fixing or questions that are out of scope.
Refer them to their sales representative for questions about pricing, their subscriptions
or other sales-related questions or problems.
A good tip can also be to have one place in which you collect all the shared
documentation. You can for example do that in the form of a Guidebook through the
different flows if needed.

What is this task about?

Those are some experience-based advices from the whole team to help you better organize
your work on projects, even if everyone has their own specificity to manage a project.

You need to take time to understand how you can optimize your way to supervise projects.
Maybe not all of those tips and tricks will speak to you but do not hesitate to try them all
before giving up on them!

Output

These tips should help you define your own way of leading a project efficiently. Remember
these are guidelines and not the bible.

If you think of other tips & tricks, do not hesitate to talk about them with your
coach/onboarder. It might help a lot of of other consultants to get more organized.

Don't hesitate to comment this section by clicking on the "comments" below.

PS : You need to exit the full screen mode of the elearning for this.

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