client communication Archives

Are You Watching Closely?

Management / Leave a Comment / By Vivek Jain

This sentence was the foundation of Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0482571/).

Likewise, in ongoing revenue overviews & forecasts, it can be a tendency to evaluate a project or account solely on the basis of metrics such as revenue/month or revenue/billed developer. Good or consistent numbers are correlated to an healthy client relationship.

These numbers can be deceiving, as these do not factor the client feedbacks. There are always chances that clients can be unhappy but either they can’t convey it because of lack of feedbacks mechanism, or they can’t take any steps to deal with it.

Usually, client unhappiness can go unnoticed for weeks or months. When those are observed, it can be too late to take any corrective measures. Probably, client might have already made their minds to move on.

As a senior executive, ensure that Account Manager for client project takes ongoing feedbacks from client and address any reported issue immediately. Sometimes there are just small misunderstanding between teams which when addressed help to not compound into bigger issues.

Similarly, also take your team’s feedbacks. It can be also a case that even the team members can have issues that should be taken care of.

Image Credits – https://twitter.com/nosuchtweets

Demo is Worth a Thousand Updates

Management / Leave a Comment / By Vivek Jain

A regular ongoing project has multiple tasks/modules being executed on day-to-day basis. Client’s life becomes really easy when they get regular updates about what’s going on. Predictability (more on that soon) of updates ensure there is no anxious moment for them.

But at the same time, there should also be a room for demos too. All the updates are fine till client get curious what’s actually is being built.

Let your clients know when they could expect demos of the ongoing work. Weekly, bi-weekly or maybe have a QA site where latest codes are pushed at end of the day. Let your client see what’s being worked upon.

I usually roadmap a project with demos in mind. For example, what is the smallest feature set that my project teams can show in two weeks, then in 4 weeks and so on. The initial demos can be just the bare-bone of the requirement, something really raw.

For agile projects, demo anyways is scheduled at the end of each sprint and here having a QA site works best.