Classifying Program/Project Customers/Clients?

There is a substantial amount of material on stakeholders in the program/project literature, but surprisingly little about customers. When customers are mentioned, more often than not they are listed as just another set of stakeholders. This contrasts sharply with my own experience in providing professional program/project services to external customers, where the customer is king, and distinctions between customers and stakeholders are normally very clear. This comparative neglect of customers in the literature may derive, at least in part, from a paucity of material on professional program/project services, and perhaps also from a marked preoccupation in the non-major program literature with organizational change programs, where the providing organization itself is also the customer. This paper aims to draw more attention to the importance of the customers in the broader program/project context, by attempting to classify them in a way that covers most program/project application areas.

Discussion of terminologies leads to the following definitions/descriptors:

• Client organization: The organization which purchases the program/project, and is the broad end-user of its outputs.

• Internal customers: Those people or groups within the client organization that are directly involved in furthering the program/project

• Stakeholders: Those people or groups who are not clients/customers, but who have an interest in, and/or whose interests may be affected by, the program/project.

The following classification of client organizations was then developed.

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About the Author Alan Stretton, PhD Alan Stretton is currently a member of the Faculty Corps of the University of Management and Technology, Arlington, Virginia, USA. In 2006 he retired from a position as Adjunct Professor of Project Management in the Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Australia, which he joined in 1988 to develop and deliver a Master of Project Management program. Prior to joining UTS, Mr. Stretton worked in the building and construction industries in Australia, New Zealand and the USA for some 38 years, which included the project management of construction, R&D, introduction of information and control systems, internal management education programs and organizational change projects. He has degrees in Civil Engineering (BE, Tasmania) and Mathematics (MA, Oxford), and an honorary PhD in strategy, programme and project management (ESC, Lille, France). Alan was Chairman of the Standards (PMBOK) Committee of the Project Management Institute from late 1989 to early 1992. He held a similar position with the Australian Institute of Project Management (AIPM), and was elected a Life Fellow of AIPM in 1996. He was a member of the Core Working Group in the development of the Australian National Competency Standards for Project Management. He has published over seventy professional articles. Alan can be contacted at alanailene@bigpond.com.au.