Patrick Mosher argues that most consulting projects fail because expectations were never written down at the start. Capture them explicitly early, and when problems arise, you can identify what was missing instead of blaming execution.
Chapters
First of all, I just demonstrated lesson number 1 of Consulting 101. Get the expectations of your customer. Write that down. Expectations is the most important thing that you can do as a consultant, is to get the expectations of your client. And get it up front, first thing. The number 1 issue of getting rolled off a project, having a bad project, is not that you didn't do well. It's that you didn't meet the expectation, either that was stated or not stated up front. And if there's anything you take away from tonight, take that one away. If you start having troubles on a project, it's probably because there's an expectation that you're missing. And a lot of times that expectation isn't stated out loud.