Managing SMEs in projects

Want to really find yourself between a rock and a hard place?
Try working with several subject matter experts (SMEs) on the same project
Ideally from the legal department.

A few years ago, my team was developing an e-learning course about a legal topic. They provided us with three of their lawyers to ensure everything in the course was legally correct.

After weeks of sending emails back and forth, we realised there were many issues the three gentlemen couldn’t agree on themselves.

To make things worse, they did not limit their input to legal matters! Oh no!

They were complaining about the order of slides, the writing style, and even some design elements.

Don’t get me wrong. We’re no snowflakes at JollyDeck, and we always honour any feedback – especially when it comes from the client.

But it’s hard to complete a project if one SME criticises something you’ve built with another one.

This is when we first implemented our sign-off protocol, which we’ve been using ever since.

It’s actually very simple!

We break the project into phases, and at the end of each phase, we require the sign-off of all stakeholders. The sign-off might well be an informal agreement, but we make it clear that it requires a sort of commitment from all stakeholders.

More importantly, at the end of each phase, we know exactly what scope of the project we are signing off on.

For example, at the end of the design phase, we don’t discuss whether information should be included in the course or not – because an agreement about this has already been reached. (At least in the ideal scenario 🙂)

Before you accuse me of saying this process is not agile – it’s not.

But, coming from a software development background where we almost religiously stick to agile methodologies, I can confidently say that sometimes being agile is not the most cost-effective way of doing things.

Sometimes, done is better than perfect.

And this is the way to get things done – despite resistance from the SMEs.