Param had done a great job on the 3 projects he had participated as a developer and designer. He was assigned as the design lead in a large application development project for a travel company. He was outstanding in his design that the team and the customer were in awe of his exceptional skills.
As a consequence, Param was asked to work on an application extension, which the company wanted to launch to help their frequent travelers with tracking their travel and holiday plans on their personal devices. Param was excited and had a lot of ideas on the details that can be tracked and explained the approach, which required the frequent travelers to share some of their personal data. While the customer was happy to see the possibilities, they felt that the frequent flyers may not be happy to share the additional personal information. Param was convinced that when the end-user sees the tracker application prototype, they will be convinced to share the extra detail. Such an assumption was a big risk that the customer was unwilling to take.
As the manager responsible for this account, what will be your advice to Param?
Suggested Solution:
As the account manager of the travel company, I would quickly step in to help Param understand the customer situation. To do this, it is important to get Param to introspect his own performance which had been very successful. Through that exercise, Param should be able to see that his performance was recognized against the backdrop of expectations clearly set by the customer. In a technical role, Param was developing solutions that had already evolved based on customer situation. Based on that discussion, the next step would be make Param view the constraints that the customer operates in. It will be nice to have Param go through some role play, talk to a few end users and represent them while defining the solution.
The key thing to do would be to have Param wear the end user hat and understand the complexities from that perspective.
