It’s essential to complete a user research project on time.
Some times project deadlines are skipped, and the user research is not finished on time.
Deadlines are important, and the success of a user research Project depends on timely delivery.
While working on user research Projects, I got to know the common issues that cause a delay in the projects. This article is about what we learnt about managing user research Projects so far.
Tip 1: Refine objectives in the beginning
Imagine you are working in a team of two at the beginning of a user research project, and it’s great. You and your teammate define the objectives, and you move on to the later phases on the project. Then other people start to join in the meetings, and they want to add more research objectives. So you go back to the objective defining phase and add those research objectives, and you move on to the later stages of the project.
When you are in the middle of the project, Then comes the CEO, and she said that half of the total research objectives are irrelevant, she asks to remove those unrelated objectives and add objectives which she will tell.
You stop in the middle of the project and go back to the starting phase and again start defining objectives. That means you work on the project from scratch. This interruption in the middle of the project, going back and start the process again and consumes much time.
My tip no. 1 is to refine the objectives and keep the stakeholders in the loop so that they know whats going on in the project. Move on to the later stages only after discussing the objectives with all the stakeholders in the beginning, so that you don’t get surprises in the middle of the project.
Tip 2: Start Recruiting early
Its best to prepare the screener, start recruiting and scheduling participants as soon as possible. One issue we face is that sometimes, the participant is not available for the study. The whole research team and clients are waiting to watch an interview, and the participant doesn’t show up. It affects the project timeline and adds up to the project cost. To avoid the situation of a participant not showing up, my tip is to start recruiting early and keep sending participants reminders.
Tip 3: Add buffers in the project timeline
According to Murphy’s law, anything that can go wrong will go wrong. There will be uncertainties which can affect your project timeline. To avoid project delay, add buffers between activities. So the objective is to finish activities as soon as possible without consuming buffers. However, buffers are available to absorb uncertainties.
