Analysis differs from guessing in that analysis is based on reliable information already available. For analyzing expectations, here are some of the types information that the analysis can be based on.
Project deliverables
These are the low hanging fruits of finding the client’s expectations. During the planning of your project, you created some kind of overview of what will be delivered and when. These automatically become expectations. They’re very easy to identify and, if the requirements are described clearly and agreed upon with the customer, these can more or less automatically be converted to expectations.
List of expectations from previous projects with the client
If this is a repeat client, you’re in luck in regards to expectation management – you can take advantage of the fact that you have already seen which expectations the customer actually had and if you properly logged everything at the last project, you will be able to learn from your mistakes the second time around and have a much more accurate list of expectations.
Naturally you can’t just transfer the list of expectations from the old project, not only because this is perhaps another type of project, but also because the customer might have been affected by the previous project and have changed their expectation. Maybe they started out expecting getting an informal progress report every day, but you failed to meet this expectation in the first project and only gave weekly reports. This behavior could very well have changed the expectation of the customer, so they now only expect a weekly report and they will be quite content with that.
List of expectations from similar projects or clients
Unless this is your first project ever, you will have already completed projects with other clients. If you did your expectation management well in those projects, it means you will have the opportunity to do it even better this time. You will already have analyzed the expectations of this type of client or project and won’t have to start over. You may even have discovered where you went wrong, where you found that you had not been aware of an expectation. You can’t go back in time but you can do it right the second time.
The good news about this is, that you don’t even have to base it on your own projects – you can learn from other people in a similar industry. However, no two companies are identical, they provide slightly different services, have slightly different brands and the people in them are different. They will give out different expectations. That’s why you can get inspiration from outside, but the best source of identifying expectations will be from projects in your own company.
[...] recently published posts about how you can identify expectations through guesswork or analysis. Those are good options and should not be neglected, but there is another way of learning about [...]