CHAPTER SIX Articulating the Real Customer Need and Business Case for the Project This book is about what you, as functional manager, need to excel in bringing meaningful change to your organization. A fundamental understanding of project management is one step; understanding your role in the provider/customer relationship is another. Now you must acquire the skills to complement those of your provider. This chapter addresses the first of the four critical skills you need, which, to recap, are: 1. Articulating the real customer need and business case for your project. 2. Staying focused on project deliverables. 3. Understanding your key project dependencies. 4. Being proactive about project risk. A skill lacking in many projects is the ability to find and articulate the real customer need, a need that is met by a mission. This skill must be applied during the initiation of projects, but often is glossed over. If you expect a project team to deliver results and the project to provide the desired benefits, you must play a central role in articu- lating the need. Users have a sense of the needs, but do not realize their implications. Sponsors and executives know the benefits they 143 American Managememt Association · www.amanet.org