Customerizing project management

The field of project management has been slow do what Tom Peters calls customerizing the work of business; or in other words, institutionalizing the customers' viewpoint into their perspective. This article outlines a model for customer-driven project management that synthesizes theoretical and practical management, and draws from the authors' book, Customer-Driven Project Management: A New Paradigm in Total Quality Management. The customer-driven project management process is described in these eight sequential phases: 1) defining the quality issue(s); 2) understanding and defining the process; 3) selecting improvement opportunities; 4) targeting and analyzing these improvement opportunities; 5) designing and producing the project deliverable; 6) measuring the deliverable and project processes against the customer's needs and expectations; 7) implementing the improvement; and 8) monitoring the results for continuous improvement and closing out the project.