Managing Client Expectations, Part 2

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Continuing to look at the “soft” considerations of webdev project pricing, we must acknowledge that most people don’t have the first idea about how a site dev process works: 

• Creative Variables. By their nature, software projects are unique. You can’t receive a creative brief, go away for six months and come back with a good finished product. That's just not how it works. Make sure the client realizes this and is in it for the long haul as an engaged partner in the site development.  

• All engineers are optimists. Site developers are engineers of a sort. They are inclined to say, regardless of what they’re asked, “Oh, yeah. We can knock this out in a few days.” Then suddenly, you can end up with six months of development work based on what gets discovered in those first few days. 

• Essential disconnect. The fact is that there is an essential schism between the way most folks expect the webdev process to go, and the way it actually ends up going. We’ll discuss that in more depth in the next post.