Manage Your Project Portfolio, 2nd Edition

Define the Business You Are In

Your users—not necessarily your customers—define the business you are in. Your users have problems that your products or systems or deliverables solve for them. You might sell the systems to people who are not your users: think of companies who provide voicemail systems, where the buyers are telephone system administrators but the users are the people who buy telephone system access from the telephone system providers.

In order to define your organization’s, group’s, or team’s mission, you have to know what business you’re in. The problems your projects solve define the business you are in.

Don’t be surprised if the business you are in is not the software business. If you provide voicemail systems, you’re in ...