Make Fun of Your Client To Prevent Defects

October 27, 2009 By Leave a Comment

One thing I’ve always heard about learning a new language is that you can’t consider yourself fully fluent until you can tell a joke. Telling a joke requires the understanding of homonyms and how words flow together. “So a guy walks into a bar…” sounds different than “A man enters beverage store…”.

When dealing with clients, it’s easy to joke about your client, but don’t miss an opportunity to prevent future missteps once you know more about them.

How often do you get off the phone with a client and immediately have a funny remark about some critique or issue they have mentioned. Typically this manifests itself when the client brings up an issue, that while important to them, is considered trivial by the developer.

Can you believe this guy!? I built out this whiz-bang feature and he’s just complaining about the font being too small!

The key part of this interaction is that you’ve now got a little insight into what makes this particular client tick. When you demo the next few features and he is unimpressed by the functionality, but comments on the spacing of form elements you should skip the joke and make a mental note for the future.

Once you can tell a joke about your client, before the interaction, and you have an “I told ya so!” moment with yourself or your pair afterwards, you know you’ve made it to the next level of understanding that client. Now, the next time you deploy a feature, discuss requirements or ask a question you can preempt the inevitable by accounting for those quirks and personal preferences of your client.

Instead of making a joke, make them happy, then you can both smile. ;)

Filed Under: Development, Ideas, Riffs Tagged With: , ,

The Secret to Greedy (but ethical) Hourly Billing

July 11, 2008 By Leave a Comment

The typical client project goes something like this:

  1. Provide estimate
  2. Complete work
  3. ???
  4. Bill time spent
  5. Profit

So why do so many people insist on killing their project’s profitability with endless tweaks and freebies? Take a page out of Gordon Gecko’s playbook and get a little greedy with your billing, your bank account will thank you later.

Selling Value

There is part of the project estimation process that is directly related to the sales process. Before you even get to the estimation process you should have a firm grasp on what exactly you’re estimating. Most importantly you should know what the value of this new work means to the client.

If, during your sales process you make an accurate determination of the client’s perceived value, you will be able to adjust your estimate accordingly to maximize billable hours and thus profit. If you cannot determine the value of this new work in the client’s eyes you will either charge too much (seemingly providing too little value) or charge too little (reducing your profitability).

Isn’t That Unfair

“I quoted 25 hours for this project, but only spent 15 hours working on it, isn’t it unfair to bill for 25 hours?”

Attention Beatnik: put down the bongos and look around. See this building, see these computers, those dreams and aspirations? See those hardworking employees. They are not concerned with the weight of your conscious, they are concerned about improving their lives and producing something of value for your clients.

I believe in the basic premise of supply and demand. At all points in the supply curve there are people willing to buy. You need to start thinking of your estimates and price quotes as a point on that curve and your client as the person who wants to buy at your price.

The client has accepted the reality that their project will be completed in the time you have quoted

But I Under Promise and Over Deliver!

I’ve got four words for ya.

More importantly, over delivering on your budget (by billing less than you said) is an empty gesture for your client and a step backwards for your profitability.

  1. If your clients are the type of people who love you for saving them 3 hours of billable time you need to find less budget oriented clients and more value oriented clients
  2. Not billing part of a project does nothing to send a long lasting, relationship building message, it’s as warm and personable as the GAAP
  3. It’s not personal, it’s not thoughtful, and it’s not remarkable.

Extra Time is Not Time To Waste

If you’re 40 hours into a 50 hour project and everything is complete and ready to go, do not spend those extra 10 hours adding little things and beautifying the project.

“But I want to make the project as good as it can be!”

That’s what those FORTY hours you spent earlier were for. If you’re done with a project, you’re done with a project. If the things you’re wasting time adding at the end are really necessary they would have been in the project to begin with. If you’re concerned about your quality of work to the point where you need to go back after a project is “done” and fix it, you need to take a serious look at your production process.

“But I’m billing for the extra time, so why not make things better?”

The project is done, ship it, bill it and move on with your life. You need to be jumping on that next project where you can put those extra few hours to good use.

You Run a Business, Not a Charity

If you have some moral qualm with charging people what they’ve agreed to pay then perhaps you should get into the non-profit business where you don’t have to worry about making such difficult decisions (or money).

If you’re still having trouble coming to grips with this idea, consider these karma boosting ideas:

  1. Donate a portion of your profits to charity (like Authentic Jobs does)
  2. Donate money, equipment or services to support a local community group related to your industry
  3. Spend some money educating your employees
  4. Purchase thoughtful gifts for each of your clients (not at christmas either, make it “for no reason” gift)

What Would Gordon Do?

Gordon Gecko would remember that:

  1. Your building something of value for your client
  2. Your client wants to give you money for this value
  3. Your dreams and aspirations are important
  4. You’re responsible for other people
  5. There is nothing wrong with being successful
  6. All assholes speak in absolutes*

*(You don’t need to bill 100% of your estimates 100% of the time)

Filed Under: Development, Marketing Tagged With: , ,

Dead on Arrival Deadlines

May 23, 2008 By Leave a Comment

If you’ve done even a small amount of project management for a web development project you have probably been responsible for and have issued a number of deadlines. Deadlines make sense, they feel right, there’s just something about them that says “productivity”. You can make a deadline for some aspect of your project and it feels like you did something, you set a goal, you drew a line in the sand; I’m going to need to take a break after taking about it. Unfortunately, deadlines are as easy to ignore as they are to make, they are usually one directional in nature and they are a poor measure of productivity, accomplishment and satisfaction.

Purpose of Deadlines

Deadlines usually serve as a method in which to shift responsibility from one person to another. As a stakeholder in a project I can shift my responsibility of launching my project on such and such date to my hired development team. As a manager I can shift my responsibility of getting the project completed and delivered to the customer to my development team. As a developer I can find ways to shift my responsibility of completing the deadline back to the manager or client in the form of “I need…”. No one ever wants to own a deadline, they just want someone else to accept the responsibility for it’s failure and receive the accolades when it’s successful.

Responsibility Shift

During the deadline assignment process, do you find yourself using a lot of four letter words ? Every deadline is usually “easy” and “can’t” be that bad. You usually hear these type of phrases at the “responsibility shift” point in the deadline life cycle. When the project manager is shifting the responsibility to the developer they’ve got their rose colored glasses on and their attitude seems to be one of hope, relaxation, ponies, rainbows and lollipops.

  • Well that shouldn’t be too hard
  • There isn’t too much complexity here
  • I can’t imagine this is too difficult
  • That won’t take long

Not Really Deadline Deadlines

My favorite type of deadlines are the ones that nobody pays attention to from the get go. You’d think that everyone in a professional environment would be wise enough not to bother with making and pretending to adhere to deadlines that all parties agree are impossible to meet. However, this seems to be one of the favorite uses of deadlines, all going back to the feel good nature of saying you’ll get something done at a certain point in time.

Imagine this scenario:

Your client wants something done in a week that would normally take two weeks, you agree but charge them more money due to the “rush” nature of this particular job. Your development team warns that it is unlikely that you will be done on schedule, however you proceed anyway. Two days go by and now the client is relaxing their own requirements. They thought they were ready for the responsibility shift, but they were missing some content and didn’t quite have the final design in place. Now responsibility has shifted back to them and they’re forced to meet their own unrealistic deadline. Of course, they know this isn’t possible so they relax the deadline and get back to you a few days later. At this point you’re not taking the deadline seriously, so it gets pushed back a bit more.

Had a realistic deadline been put in place from the start, one that gave everyone time to get their ducks in a row, the project would have been completed in the same amount of time, the developers would not have been overworked, the client wouldn’t have had to scramble to get the content together and end product wouldn’t have been so rushed.

Improving Deadlines

  • Consult the people who are doing the work required to make the deadline attainable (usually the developers)
  • Make sure you’re not taking ownership of something you don’t have a good amount of control over
  • Don’t use the four letter words describe above
  • Speak up when you hear a deadline that’s probably going to fail
  • Fight the urge to appease people by agreeing to deadlines that can’t be met
Filed Under: Development, Riffs Tagged With: , ,