466 CASE 20 Billingsly: A Case Study in Managing Project Risks and Client Expectations Fast Forward One day toward the end of the project Sally and Pamela treated the 1FineInc project team to lunch at one of the local Mexican restaurants. While the team celebrated what had evolved into a very successful project, Sally and Pamela sat across from each other at one end of the table thinking back over the rocky beginnings of the project. They reminisced about lessons learned on this project and throughout their careers and about assessing and managing the various aspects of projects. Sally and Pamela talked about their 40+ col- lective years of experience in HCI. They both had defined and implemented UCD programs as part of the overall design and development process at a variety of companies. And, they had led teams through countless consulting projects. Why was there so much angst during this project, they pondered. Sally and Pamela were so passionate about their field they began to think about the pursuit work before winning the engagement. Sally said, "You know, when I talk about our 3 × 3, I get very excited. Probably too excited. I'm always so proud of the successes we've had in driving the three unique approaches to the solution down to one through iterative usability testing and prototype refinement. Sometimes I wonder if my excitement and passion for the process itself gets in the way of my fully articulating what gets deliv- ered, especially when I explain it to people outside of our field." Summary As Sally and Pamela began enumerating lessons learned around managing client expectations of conceptual design, they kept coming back to a few critical observations: · When describing conceptual design using iterative paper prototyping and usability testing, specifically the 3 × 3, during the sales pursuit and during the project kickoff, especially to IT developers, technical architects, and managers, it's important to explain fully what will result from the activity. Often the 3 × 3 is done as the final activity of the first phase of the project ("discovery" or "strategy" or "envision"), primarily for the purpose of scoping, sizing, and pricing the remainder of the project, which will include fully designing and developing the solution. At other times it is used as the first activity of the second phase, typically the "design" phase of the project. In either case it is