"Sparkling daggers" or as we did the Arab project
** attention, this article ends as suddenly as the project described in it **
It all began more than optimistic: customers from the UAE (a new market for us), a presentable appearance of representatives, promises of other contracts, “ money is not a problem ”. All this in total has played a cruel joke with us and, to our misfortune, we subscribed to this development. I wanted to try. In the end, this turned into a termination of the contract unilaterally, but not from the client, but by us - an outsourcing company.
The project itself was simple - it was an auction for the sale of car numbers ($ 80,000- $ 90,000 each), camels and other attributes of the ordinary life of the United Arab Emirates. It was necessary to create iOS app, looking at the already existing (but not working yet) web version. At the stage of the first after-sales communication of the client, I was leading, and already then the first alarm began to appear, because the client provided very little information about the project. After that, management transferred to our project manager. Looking ahead, I will say that, as a result, he not only did not go to the yellow house, but did not even turn completely gray, for which he had great respect.
So, the first feature mentioned above is very little information, and, as it turned out, this is not a feature of an individual client, but a feature of all regional companies that place orders directly, and not through Western partners. The fact is that the culture of management and administration in the Arab world is very different from the Western and from ours too. It is very variable and the same conditions can lead to different results. “ Verbal agreements ” can be cited as an example: in London (and the project, by the way, was sold through our London office), an oral agreement is a legally recognized form of concluding a deal and treat it accordingly, but still prefer to draw up contracts on paper . In the Arab world, things are a little more complicated - contracts are neglected, but the oral form of contractual relations dominates. Because of this, a lot of things are never described on paper unless the project goes beyond the region, since it is believed that everything can be agreed personally. In our case, this was exactly the case; the project was almost entirely for the local market and its only international feature was the ability to choose English interface language. Due to the lack of any valuable information at the first stage, the stage of project analysis was very important. Who would have thought that already at this stage we would begin to feel the full force of the blow from the collision of two different project management styles.
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The first thing we noticed was a very aggressive communication style from the very first day when the project entered the development office. Before we thought that the ex-Soviet customers are the most aggressive, but no. This aggression manifested itself even when we were trying to clarify absolutely harmless things, such as when the API demo will be. This can be called the second feature - if you are paid money, then for an Arab customer you are just an employee, but not a partner. In our case, the situation was aggravated by the fact that the founders of the customer company were quite young people. I suggest you to imagine a mixture of oriental temperament, young age and big money. As a result, the solution was found in asking them the minimum number of questions and proposing the maximum themselves. It did not always work, because with more than three-hour silence, ping-letters immediately began to pour in, but life became a little easier.
The customer requested a prototype. OK, this is our job. The prototype was made in Axure and turned out to be very detailed, given the amount of information that was on hand. Through constant letters of indignation - “ what took so long ” - the prototype was completed. The project manager has learned Zen and all the nuances of acquiring car numbers in Abu Dhabi. The client began to make changes to the location of elements and other trifles - this is normal, a workflow. With grief in half this stage we passed, having lost “only” a week on the way to communicate with the client. At the same time, the technical specification was being written, which was very hard due to the complete lack of assistance. The pressure of claims to us was intensified due to the fact that we were delaying the deadlines already in the first stages, and of course, nobody wanted to hear about the reasons for the delay (read above). Here we are faced with another feature , the third. Under the terms of the contract, we have subscribed to certain deadlines for the work, at the same time, the clause was present in the contract that the customer undertakes to provide us with the data necessary for development. And here they were able to cling to the fact that the contact did not indicate what they should give us. It turned out that in their opinion, we do not need the API in principle. Then it turned out that no one is going to provide the API, simply because it is not there, and when it is, no one can say, however, this did not prevent customers from constantly reminding about our deadlines and deadlines in general. Those. any documents and agreements are distorted in favor of the customer and this was on each of my 4 Arab projects.
The fourth feature is that no complaints about the customer are accepted, period. Attempts to explain that deadlines are delayed, because the client does not answer questions or does not provide enough information in his answers, as well as due to lack of API documentation or live demos - all this was ignored, and if he was honored to answer, then it was in the spirit of " engage in the project, it’s not worth us to teach, you have a contract - you are obliged to give us a beta build to such a number, follow "- this is a quote from one of the telephone conversations. And this, I note, even before the interface was agreed. How can we communicate and lead a joint project, even if we are just a performer, it did not fit in my head. The project was already turning into flour, and our first thoughts began to appear that it would not end well.
When the design phase began, the client asked the application to look like an auction website in order to maintain continuity. I didn’t want to argue about the design of their site, so it was decided to squeeze out what is maximum. We prepared “two and a half” design options, the customer chose one, another 2 weeks went to rework and refinement, to the extent that we were told which element to move and which background photo to use. Okay, seemingly finished, the design is accepted. At this point, the project statistics showed that it definitely would not be profitable for the company, because elapsed time was already 50% of the estimated. It was taken for granted that the project margin would be minimal, if at all.
Nevertheless, the design is accepted, a reason to rejoice, but it was not there. A flurry of calls and letters began about the fact that literally tomorrow there should already be a beta build on the original contract, and you just sent us the final design today. Nobody wanted to hear that the Milestone deadlines were postponed in proportion to the downtime due to the customer’s fault , of course. And then the unexpected happened - in our London office "Came." I wrote the word "They came" with a capital letter, because according to the stories of the staff it was a real spectacle. At the business meeting were the representatives of our customers in a very aggressive mood and with daggers, which they did not fail to glance and threatened to use. The director of the office had to intervene in the matter, who pointed these people first to the contract and then to the door. Feature five - often Arab customers try to move the conflict as close as possible to you (physically). This story certainly made a double impression on our English office: on the one hand, it was a free presentation, but on the other, it was somehow very sad.
The pressure increased, and we made the decision not to start development until the API was ready. What reaction it caused the customer, you can imagine. The threats of the court began, the pressure on the English office and the project manager increased to the maximum. After consulting, we decided to terminate the contract unilaterally, because the conditions created by the client turned out to be beyond us. All materials: a prototype, design, specification for 30+ pages were sent to the client along with a formal notice of termination of the contract. Of course there were further threats, calls, letters, but this was completely unimportant. They did not go to court because win the chance they did not have.
This is how one of the Arab projects ended for us - not even reaching the stage of development. I don’t know which company ended the project, but judging by what is available on the App Store (link removed), our design was taken, our logic is in line with our prototype.
It was a very hard, but extremely rewarding experience. It was worth getting it not only for the sake of stress resistance training, but also to evaluate the degree of its security. After that, we revised our approach to concluding contracts, describing mutual responsibilities within their framework and calculating risks when working with clients from this region. It is also worth saying that Arab customers having their offices in Europe and working through them is a completely different approach due to the fact that between the original client and the contractor is the same interpreter - the European office, which is necessary as air for successfully conducting projects with representatives this region.
During my entire career, I had 4 Arab projects: 2 mobile, one telecom and one web. One of them managed to finish. Of course, it is impossible to judge the whole region in general either for this article or for 4 projects, however, the experience is still negative. Perhaps working locally in Abu Dhabi or Dubai, the situation is completely different. Hence the request. Tell us in the comments about your experience of working with customers from Arab countries.
Start
It all began more than optimistic: customers from the UAE (a new market for us), a presentable appearance of representatives, promises of other contracts, “ money is not a problem ”. All this in total has played a cruel joke with us and, to our misfortune, we subscribed to this development. I wanted to try. In the end, this turned into a termination of the contract unilaterally, but not from the client, but by us - an outsourcing company.
The project itself was simple - it was an auction for the sale of car numbers ($ 80,000- $ 90,000 each), camels and other attributes of the ordinary life of the United Arab Emirates. It was necessary to create iOS app, looking at the already existing (but not working yet) web version. At the stage of the first after-sales communication of the client, I was leading, and already then the first alarm began to appear, because the client provided very little information about the project. After that, management transferred to our project manager. Looking ahead, I will say that, as a result, he not only did not go to the yellow house, but did not even turn completely gray, for which he had great respect.
So, the first feature mentioned above is very little information, and, as it turned out, this is not a feature of an individual client, but a feature of all regional companies that place orders directly, and not through Western partners. The fact is that the culture of management and administration in the Arab world is very different from the Western and from ours too. It is very variable and the same conditions can lead to different results. “ Verbal agreements ” can be cited as an example: in London (and the project, by the way, was sold through our London office), an oral agreement is a legally recognized form of concluding a deal and treat it accordingly, but still prefer to draw up contracts on paper . In the Arab world, things are a little more complicated - contracts are neglected, but the oral form of contractual relations dominates. Because of this, a lot of things are never described on paper unless the project goes beyond the region, since it is believed that everything can be agreed personally. In our case, this was exactly the case; the project was almost entirely for the local market and its only international feature was the ability to choose English interface language. Due to the lack of any valuable information at the first stage, the stage of project analysis was very important. Who would have thought that already at this stage we would begin to feel the full force of the blow from the collision of two different project management styles.
')
Requirements collection
The first thing we noticed was a very aggressive communication style from the very first day when the project entered the development office. Before we thought that the ex-Soviet customers are the most aggressive, but no. This aggression manifested itself even when we were trying to clarify absolutely harmless things, such as when the API demo will be. This can be called the second feature - if you are paid money, then for an Arab customer you are just an employee, but not a partner. In our case, the situation was aggravated by the fact that the founders of the customer company were quite young people. I suggest you to imagine a mixture of oriental temperament, young age and big money. As a result, the solution was found in asking them the minimum number of questions and proposing the maximum themselves. It did not always work, because with more than three-hour silence, ping-letters immediately began to pour in, but life became a little easier.
The customer requested a prototype. OK, this is our job. The prototype was made in Axure and turned out to be very detailed, given the amount of information that was on hand. Through constant letters of indignation - “ what took so long ” - the prototype was completed. The project manager has learned Zen and all the nuances of acquiring car numbers in Abu Dhabi. The client began to make changes to the location of elements and other trifles - this is normal, a workflow. With grief in half this stage we passed, having lost “only” a week on the way to communicate with the client. At the same time, the technical specification was being written, which was very hard due to the complete lack of assistance. The pressure of claims to us was intensified due to the fact that we were delaying the deadlines already in the first stages, and of course, nobody wanted to hear about the reasons for the delay (read above). Here we are faced with another feature , the third. Under the terms of the contract, we have subscribed to certain deadlines for the work, at the same time, the clause was present in the contract that the customer undertakes to provide us with the data necessary for development. And here they were able to cling to the fact that the contact did not indicate what they should give us. It turned out that in their opinion, we do not need the API in principle. Then it turned out that no one is going to provide the API, simply because it is not there, and when it is, no one can say, however, this did not prevent customers from constantly reminding about our deadlines and deadlines in general. Those. any documents and agreements are distorted in favor of the customer and this was on each of my 4 Arab projects.
The fourth feature is that no complaints about the customer are accepted, period. Attempts to explain that deadlines are delayed, because the client does not answer questions or does not provide enough information in his answers, as well as due to lack of API documentation or live demos - all this was ignored, and if he was honored to answer, then it was in the spirit of " engage in the project, it’s not worth us to teach, you have a contract - you are obliged to give us a beta build to such a number, follow "- this is a quote from one of the telephone conversations. And this, I note, even before the interface was agreed. How can we communicate and lead a joint project, even if we are just a performer, it did not fit in my head. The project was already turning into flour, and our first thoughts began to appear that it would not end well.
Design
When the design phase began, the client asked the application to look like an auction website in order to maintain continuity. I didn’t want to argue about the design of their site, so it was decided to squeeze out what is maximum. We prepared “two and a half” design options, the customer chose one, another 2 weeks went to rework and refinement, to the extent that we were told which element to move and which background photo to use. Okay, seemingly finished, the design is accepted. At this point, the project statistics showed that it definitely would not be profitable for the company, because elapsed time was already 50% of the estimated. It was taken for granted that the project margin would be minimal, if at all.
Nevertheless, the design is accepted, a reason to rejoice, but it was not there. A flurry of calls and letters began about the fact that literally tomorrow there should already be a beta build on the original contract, and you just sent us the final design today. Nobody wanted to hear that the Milestone deadlines were postponed in proportion to the downtime due to the customer’s fault , of course. And then the unexpected happened - in our London office "Came." I wrote the word "They came" with a capital letter, because according to the stories of the staff it was a real spectacle. At the business meeting were the representatives of our customers in a very aggressive mood and with daggers, which they did not fail to glance and threatened to use. The director of the office had to intervene in the matter, who pointed these people first to the contract and then to the door. Feature five - often Arab customers try to move the conflict as close as possible to you (physically). This story certainly made a double impression on our English office: on the one hand, it was a free presentation, but on the other, it was somehow very sad.
The finish
The pressure increased, and we made the decision not to start development until the API was ready. What reaction it caused the customer, you can imagine. The threats of the court began, the pressure on the English office and the project manager increased to the maximum. After consulting, we decided to terminate the contract unilaterally, because the conditions created by the client turned out to be beyond us. All materials: a prototype, design, specification for 30+ pages were sent to the client along with a formal notice of termination of the contract. Of course there were further threats, calls, letters, but this was completely unimportant. They did not go to court because win the chance they did not have.
This is how one of the Arab projects ended for us - not even reaching the stage of development. I don’t know which company ended the project, but judging by what is available on the App Store (link removed), our design was taken, our logic is in line with our prototype.
It was a very hard, but extremely rewarding experience. It was worth getting it not only for the sake of stress resistance training, but also to evaluate the degree of its security. After that, we revised our approach to concluding contracts, describing mutual responsibilities within their framework and calculating risks when working with clients from this region. It is also worth saying that Arab customers having their offices in Europe and working through them is a completely different approach due to the fact that between the original client and the contractor is the same interpreter - the European office, which is necessary as air for successfully conducting projects with representatives this region.
During my entire career, I had 4 Arab projects: 2 mobile, one telecom and one web. One of them managed to finish. Of course, it is impossible to judge the whole region in general either for this article or for 4 projects, however, the experience is still negative. Perhaps working locally in Abu Dhabi or Dubai, the situation is completely different. Hence the request. Tell us in the comments about your experience of working with customers from Arab countries.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/177477/
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