When a third party is responsible for a problem in a project
I would like to share one story that recently occurred in my company. I thought about publishing it, I could somehow help project managers to anticipate and avoid unwanted problems.
The story is:
One person from the financial sphere (let's call him the customer ) decided to open his own business and turned to our company (let's call it simply the company ) for software development.
The execution of the project required the development of several standard modules of the internal system and one financial-monetary module, which was completely dependent on the WEB API services of an absolutely different large company (let's call it a third party ).
The third party, on the basis of an agreement with the customer, provided the latter with services, in the form of access to its own WEB API services, with its documentation and support.
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People we are business and professional in our field, we can develop software and work with WEB API services for 5+, so the first half of the project went without a hitch. Everyone is happy that we will be able to brag about another success and the customer is also pleased.
But it was not there, the problems overtook us with the beginning of the integration of the service:
First of all, we started reporting problems and malfunctions to the customer, but he was supposedly “not an IT technician”, respectively, all the terms and questions that we ask are not clear to him, so he forwarded us to a third party on his own behalf and with complete approval to ask any technical question regarding their services.
Communication with a third party also did not work out in the best way, it happened that the question of “what does error code 234 mean, which should be registered in the manual but not” , had to wait for an answer almost the whole day, because that third party representative is not available now, then he needs to consult with the department that developed some of the services from 200-250, etc.
All correspondence was conducted through the mail where all three parties always sat in CC.
Time does not spare anyone, the end of the deadline is already close and the final straight is not visible. A dissatisfied customer comes to the company and asks, they say, when we start a project, because time is money (especially in the world of finance).
The above problems with a third party, the customer responds that he provided us with all the opportunities, took all the necessary measures to remedy the situation, and all further fault is the problem of the company's communication with a third party. The situation left hands and it was necessary to search for the decision as quickly as possible. There were two options:
Option 1 : The customer promised working WEB API services, even if he fulfills the promise, not our concern to fight with a third party, because it was not our responsibility at all.
Option disappeared. Communicating with the customer, we realized that this road will not lead us anywhere, the customer will stand on his, as before, and the company on his own, the problem will not be solved, the threat of disrupting the project. Since we are a small company, and rumors of a bad one are spreading quickly, this was, first of all, not profitable for us.
Option 2 : was our solution. We began to keep records: every time the company sent a mail to a third party, we recorded this, waited for an answer, recorded the time we received it and tweaked lost minutes (elementary arithmetic).
It looked like this:
12:00 - sent a letter to a third party about the malfunction of the service "x";
12:45 - Received the answer that now the representative of a third party to the meeting and call back in 2 hours.
- Lost time 45 min
14:45 - sent a letter to a third party that we are still waiting for an answer;
- Lost time 2 hours.
15:30 - the third party called back and gave us an answer with the decision;
- Lost time 45 min
At the end of the day, all this was beautifully drawn up in a pdf file, with its final result, which clearly expressed the lost time during the day due to the fault of a third person and sent to the customer. Especially red marked such "essential" answers as "call you back in 2 hours . " The proof of each fad from the file served as emails that all three parties received.
After exactly one week, taking into account at the end of the day, the problems with the services suddenly diminished and we began to effectively respond to all the questions asked - in general, the ice was broken.
We found out in confidence that the customer had a meeting with a third party that lasted very long and behind closed doors. What was said there remained behind these doors, but the fact is that a week later we launched the project and reached the status of “Happy Customer”.
The story is:
One person from the financial sphere (let's call him the customer ) decided to open his own business and turned to our company (let's call it simply the company ) for software development.
The execution of the project required the development of several standard modules of the internal system and one financial-monetary module, which was completely dependent on the WEB API services of an absolutely different large company (let's call it a third party ).
The third party, on the basis of an agreement with the customer, provided the latter with services, in the form of access to its own WEB API services, with its documentation and support.
')
People we are business and professional in our field, we can develop software and work with WEB API services for 5+, so the first half of the project went without a hitch. Everyone is happy that we will be able to brag about another success and the customer is also pleased.
But it was not there, the problems overtook us with the beginning of the integration of the service:
- Incomplete documentation
- Not fully modified WEB services
- Blocked access to part of the desired functionality
- etc.
First of all, we started reporting problems and malfunctions to the customer, but he was supposedly “not an IT technician”, respectively, all the terms and questions that we ask are not clear to him, so he forwarded us to a third party on his own behalf and with complete approval to ask any technical question regarding their services.
Communication with a third party also did not work out in the best way, it happened that the question of “what does error code 234 mean, which should be registered in the manual but not” , had to wait for an answer almost the whole day, because that third party representative is not available now, then he needs to consult with the department that developed some of the services from 200-250, etc.
All correspondence was conducted through the mail where all three parties always sat in CC.
Time does not spare anyone, the end of the deadline is already close and the final straight is not visible. A dissatisfied customer comes to the company and asks, they say, when we start a project, because time is money (especially in the world of finance).
The above problems with a third party, the customer responds that he provided us with all the opportunities, took all the necessary measures to remedy the situation, and all further fault is the problem of the company's communication with a third party. The situation left hands and it was necessary to search for the decision as quickly as possible. There were two options:
Option 1 : The customer promised working WEB API services, even if he fulfills the promise, not our concern to fight with a third party, because it was not our responsibility at all.
Option disappeared. Communicating with the customer, we realized that this road will not lead us anywhere, the customer will stand on his, as before, and the company on his own, the problem will not be solved, the threat of disrupting the project. Since we are a small company, and rumors of a bad one are spreading quickly, this was, first of all, not profitable for us.
Option 2 : was our solution. We began to keep records: every time the company sent a mail to a third party, we recorded this, waited for an answer, recorded the time we received it and tweaked lost minutes (elementary arithmetic).
It looked like this:
12:00 - sent a letter to a third party about the malfunction of the service "x";
12:45 - Received the answer that now the representative of a third party to the meeting and call back in 2 hours.
- Lost time 45 min
14:45 - sent a letter to a third party that we are still waiting for an answer;
- Lost time 2 hours.
15:30 - the third party called back and gave us an answer with the decision;
- Lost time 45 min
At the end of the day, all this was beautifully drawn up in a pdf file, with its final result, which clearly expressed the lost time during the day due to the fault of a third person and sent to the customer. Especially red marked such "essential" answers as "call you back in 2 hours . " The proof of each fad from the file served as emails that all three parties received.
After exactly one week, taking into account at the end of the day, the problems with the services suddenly diminished and we began to effectively respond to all the questions asked - in general, the ice was broken.
We found out in confidence that the customer had a meeting with a third party that lasted very long and behind closed doors. What was said there remained behind these doors, but the fact is that a week later we launched the project and reached the status of “Happy Customer”.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/290804/
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