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“I can do that!”Can get you in trouble
Or, Who Broke the
Project?
A bad client takes away the emotional energy you need for the good clients.
~ Client Jeri Mae Rowley
Amazing Client 1
Goosebay Sawmill and Lumber• Lydia Malstad and Betty Burbank• Betty has Usher’s Syndrome. She is deaf
and has tunnel vision.• Every week I train her
by chat on how to develop in WordPress. She is learning CSS and PHP.
When “I can do that” turns into a bad project, it’s more complicated than
“the client is bad”
or
“the developer is bad”
Let’s look further into the causes
“I can do that”Project Killers
1. Unrealistic
expectations
2. Outside
Influences
Unrealistic Expectation 1
Client doesn’t understand work of web development
Some Resulting Behaviors
• “How hard can it be?”
• Client makes poor decisions – “I want” is more important than what works
• Client expects a website in a month
Unrealistic Expectation 2
Client doesn’t understand process of working with a contractor
Some Resulting Behaviors• Attitude: I am the customer; you are the slave• Attitude: You are dying to take their project• Surprise that you can’t jump on their task immediately, even though they haven’t contacted you for a considerable amount of time or have kept you waiting.
Unrealistic Expectation 3
Client doesn’t understand either their involvement or their limitations
Some Resulting behaviors• They don’t see how rude it is to make you
wait for phone calls and for them to work with clients
• Parts of the project have to be rebuilt because they threw something at you instead of thinking it through with you
Unrealistic Expectation 4
A website is a custom product like a steak is a custom product
Some Resulting Behaviors• I can expect to have as
many changes as I want or I’m not satisfied.
• If 3rd party software doesn’t work, it’s your job to fix it.
Amazing Client 2
Missoula KOA
• Employee Linda regularly updates her web skills and keeps all the content fresh
• Their responsive site was not done correctly, so Linda came to Website HELP Wednesday week after week to work on correcting it
Outside Influences• Graphic Artists
• My friend said …
• Domains, hosts, software, search engines, etc
Outside Influences 1 Graphic Artists
• A graphic artist who doesn’t understand web user interface can tank your project.
• A graphic artist who doesn’t pay attention to the scope of your project budget can tank your project
• The work process between the owner and the graphic artist can leave you with 2 weeks to complete 6 months worth of work.
Outside Influence 2Cousins, Friends
and Mystery Developers
• “My friend said this can be fixed in 20 minutes”• “I’m sure you know about software XYZ”• “I’m going to have another guy do some work on
the site. I gave him my passwords.”• We are going to have person X maintain our site
content. (Person X is computer uncomfortable, but you have to train within the original budget.)
Outside Influence 3Domains, hosts, software,
search engines, etc
• Clients sometimes don’t know the difference between your work and the work of other services.
• Small businesses generally do not have a contingency plan, or funding, for things to go wrong.
• The developer is the closest target for venting frustration.
Amazing Client 3
OhioWoodlands.com• They are using the web service 3D Cart, which
has some “worst practices” issues.• The original custom theme is a table site, but
every single element on the site is a new table, resulting in twice as much code as is needed.
• The owner has had to be patient through the code clean up before a theme redesign could be totally implemented.
Start with your Process
• Understand that the client often does not know what is needed
• Understand that the client doesn’t know how to express what they need
• Understand that the client doesn’t know anything about the process
• Have an easy-to-understand, but comprehensive documentation system.
Actions• Provide high quality documentation
• Have patience and tolerance
• Provide training and background
• As a last resort: Fire the client
