Question

The Project Status Report Meeting

You are driving to a project status report meeting with your client. You encountered a significant technical problem on the project that has put your project behind schedule. This is not good news because completion time is the number one priority for the project. You are confident that your team can solve the problem if they are free to give their undivided attention to it and that with hard work you can get back on schedule. You also believe if you tell the client about the problem, she will demand a meeting with your team to discuss the implications of the problem. You can also expect her to send some of her personnel to oversee the solution to the problem. These interruptions will likely further delay the project. What should you tell your client about the current status of the project?

Answer 1

Knowing that if the client gets to know that we are facing some technical issues and problems with our project would make her conduct a meeting to solve the problem, would send the employees from her company to monitor the same and ensure the problem is solved. All of these activities would actually cost a lot of time and effort and you know you can actually make the technical problem solved with your own employees because they are capable enough it the time is spend accordingly.

Thus seeing the same situation, I would recommend that the manager should not discuss the same problem with the client because it would only cost time and efforts with the problem not being solved. Thus, it would be communicated that the project is going as per the standards and would only require more time not because of the technical glitches but because of the quality. To ensure more quality, you can ask the client to give you more time. This time would then be used by the employees to ensure the technical glitch is effectively improved and managed and the project could be submitted according to the standards set by the client.