Involve the client

I was talking to one of my developers a few days ago, about how I like to demonstrate completion of The Design Phase.

Having a face to face discussion about the project’s design is a good way to start, but having an interactive presentation (model) to help them “feel” their product is orders of magnitude better. When it’s interactive the client is engaged with the product early and is able to experience their product prior to development. This way I can quickly and simply prove that I was listening when they were telling me what they wanted (during the Requirements Phase).

And with a model of version (n) in front of them, the client can begin to think clearly about version (n+1).

Because everyone in this industry knows; A requirements document is never a perfect description of what the client wants, it’s the best version this time around.

Documenting for Outsourced Development

I love the idea of outsourcing development. It forces you to evolve your business processes and it’s entirely in line with the code re-use paradigm found in programming:

[Try to] write re-useable code.

When you are outsourcing your development (especially when you go off-shore) this becomes:

[Try to] write re-useable documentation.

You can no longer have a casual conversation at the coffee machine* with Fred the Coder about what it was you actually meant when you said, “The system needs to save the booking”. The document must stand by itself, it needs to be portable, it needs to be re-usable.

The document creator has to provide a Rosetta Stone for the project: A record of the non-technical description provided by the client and a cohesive translation into the technical description for the development team. When questions are asked by either group, those answers should be noted and incorporated into the (next) version of the document. Even after sigining off on a final version.

If you can provide the perfect Rosetta Stone, then you will only have minimal interaction with the development team which reduces the management overheads. Badly written documentation results in far too much live translation and that leads to missed dead-lines and budget blow-outs.

*or PS3 or Kitchenette etc.

Expectations, I’ve had a few…

I’m am getting a little involved with http://www.joyent.com/joyeurblog/2009/09/05/is-the-customer-always-right-no/” target=”_blank”>this article at Joyent about sticking up for your team, even if that means saying no to a customer. It’s a topic close to my heart, especially as I start up a new project.

The crux of the problem is that a client who doesn’t understand what they are paying for needs to be educated; and that education actually costs the provider money, one way or another. If the cost of educating that client is more than that client is worth to the business when do you cut your losses?

Do you hope to have 99 easy clients for each hard one and have the many pay for the few (the typical approach) or do you show the hard one the door? What if the ratio was 999:1? 9999:1?

What’s the break even level? Is it worth it?

I don’t think there is a simple solution, each situation has to be evaluated individually. Before you go in the room, you need to know what you are willing to spend on educating the client. What proportion of the project is going to be invested in managing the client’s expectations. Who’s going to do it? How will it be done?

Joyent has massive archives of forum posts that deal with almost all the crazy things that can happen in their hosting services, they even have a wiki. Is it enough? For me, Yes. For others?

Even 499:1 is probably worth it…

Customer Sales

A Customer Sales report shows you the total sales figures, over a period of time, for each customer.

Refinements on this usually include:

• Show monthly sub-totals if the period specified spans two or more months.
• Allow filtering; for specific products, customers.

Use it to:

• Find out your best customers – Who should the business invest resources in (care about) the most.
• Confirm pricing breaks awarded to customers are reflected in their sales value to the business.
• Encourage mid-range customers to increase their spend by advising them of the benefits obtainable at the next spend level (price break) – They are already buying your (A, B, C) products, do they know you also sell D, E & F? Do they purchase them from your compeditors? Why aren’t they buying them from you?

You will need:

• Customers list
• Sales history (with links to the Customer list)