I am the kind of person that could annoy you after a few minutes if I am trying to learn something new.

Why? It’s pretty simple… I ask a lot of questions.

I am a project manager by trade and my specific niche is managing web re-design projects. More and more, we are designing websites and blogs for clients that require greater functionality and programming requirements. With these requests come more of the unknown on my end. I am not a programmer and therefore have found myself, asking programmers questions to understand the full scope of work, as to not allow key elements slip through the cracks. I can manage just about anything, but when it comes to the full understanding of what is and what is not possible in web development, you can be certain I will be consulting my “trusted advisors”, a.k.a. programmers.

Web project managers rely heavily on others’ knowledge in order to quote projects correctly.  We also rely on outside sources to educate us on the steps we need to take to get the project done and how to supply updates to the client of what has been completed (even though sometimes can seem like nothing because it is all behind the scenes in code). Having a team of developers who are detail oriented is important. Without the detail, projects can often be misquoted due to an oversite on the deliverables. Much of the complexity involved in creating a website is making it work properly for a visitor. Without the proper documentation in the beginning, projects can go astray, and before you know it the five page site you quoted has turned into a 40 page e-commerce site.

With documentation come questions, at least for me. When I start to quote a project requiring more than just the simple site development, I ask at least 20 questions to ensure every step is accounted for. If I don’t ask the questions, I risk not knowing the full scope of the project, and could be setting the project up for failure.  We all know it is difficult to manage something when you don’t know what is going on?

I know that not every project will go smoothly, and more often than not a client WILL forget to tell you something… but I feel like my job is to ask all the questions early and gain a complete understanding so the project can go as smooth as possible. The client has come to me and my team because we are the experts and they rely on us to ask the right questions to get what we need from them.

But what good is it all if you are not listening? If you ask the questions, like I do, you must listen and absorb the information you get in return.  Like my friend Matt Bernier of Reinforce Media puts it:

“Hearing what the customer ‘really’ wants and needs as well as what they are saying they want and need requires asking the right questions.”

Listening to the answers the client and other team members give makes for a better understanding of the overall scope. You have to understand each chain link, to fully understand the overall chain that makes up the project, if a chain link is broken, the project will be too.

Maybe it is my obsession for knowing the details, or my fear of not knowing, but I am certain I will never grow tired of asking a lot of questions.