It's Never Just a Project Management Problem

[laughs]

Thank you so much, Audrey.

Happy to be here.

I know you talk to a lot of agency owners, and you hear what's frustrating for them.

You also help them figure out what's missing.

So how would you actually describe what you do, if we strip away the corporate title for a second?

I always joke I have the most fun job out of anyone that I work with, 'cause I do just get to chat with people all the time.

And really, the deeper we can go into these conversations with agency owners and leaders, I get to pull apart those problems, so it's very rewarding that way.

It sounds like your role is to tap into what is frustrating or challenging for agency owners, and because Function Point is about project management and profitability, you tap into those frustrations, and you help define how your team can help relieve those pain points.

That's exactly it.

Project management is such a large piece of what we do, and the pain points that people bring to us.

There's a lot that goes into the system, and it's almost like if you're going to an RMT or something of the sort where you're feeling pain in one area, but it's actually caused by somewhere else in the body.

It's sort of similar to that, where I usually find if I ask, like, why enough and we dig in, you can trace it through somewhere else in a project's life cycle.

Maybe it is in the project management, but maybe it's in the actual onboarding of this customer, or how we set up their scope of work, something else.

That's a wonderful analogy.

It brings to mind my last visit to a physiotherapist, where I had thought I had a rotator cuff injury, but apparently it was connected to somewhere else in my body.

What I'm hearing you say is in project management, it may look like a project management issue, but it might stem from somewhere else.

So what are agencies actually telling you is frustrating about project management right now? If you had to name the top few things you keep hearing over and over again, what would they be?

Over-servicing is always being brought up.

I think agencies just wanna do by, right by their customers and give them something that, that works well for them, so, you know, it's all coming from a good place.

But the reason for that over-servicing tends to change quite often with different trends.

Right now, alongside over-servicing, it's validating their work and the value of it.

You know, it's hard enough for us to go back and have that change in scope or put in a change order and ask for more budget.

It's even harder now when we're trying to then say, "Well, this is taking me longer," and somebody might be asking the question of are you using AI, are you not using AI? And having to have that conversation alongside validating the work that you're providing, it's a bit of a tougher conversation.

That's a big conversation that agencies are having right now with their clients.