Two pictures with the customer

Knock on the door. Everyone suddenly shudders, but when he realizes what happened, he hastily jump up from his seat, putting his appearance in order. After a prolonged silent peeking one more knock sounded, more insistent. Sighing loudly and plucking up courage, someone from the crowd at the door opened it.

- “Hello, what aren't you opening?”
- "So we, it seems, did not expect anyone today .."
- “How did you not wait? What day is it today? Agreed on the same ... "

A recent brave man turned his gaze to a wall calendar with a corporate logo and confusion appeared on his face. From awareness of the heavy continuation of the evening, the head snapped. The customer slowly shook off the soaked raincoat and hung it on a hanger.
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- “Come on in the talk. Tea? Coffee?"

Leave the lyrics, let's do hypnosis.

This artistic introduction would like to touch on a topic such as the interaction of a triumvirate: a manager, a developer, and a customer. Many articles have been written about this topic, many reports have been made at conferences, many copies have been broken in discussions, but mostly they are devoted to criticism of excessive management. In this article, the reader will be presented with two stories in the pictures. Let's look at the situation when the very one criticized by the management is not enough. The two sketches are based on real stories, maybe you will recognize yours among them.

We start, close your eyes. Imagine the average IT-office, forget about the giant corporations and the gallant knights of freelancing ...

Painting "All grown-up"

Disposition: you are a novice developer, perhaps still a student, you are offered a place with a payment slightly higher than the market, the project is a promising startup that is steadily funded from the personal funds of an entrepreneur-individual. The story of a resounding success is already drawn in the head, it remains the case: to accept the offer. At the interview for a tick you will learn all the conditions: the customer wants to keep abreast of the development, the previous programmer who laid the code base of the project has already quit, but this is not so important: finances and career prospects make you look to the future with a smile. This is not a laboratory at the university, it is a real development. All grown-up.

Reality: the author understands that such a manner of narration, when at the beginning there is a long transfer of a naive positive, an experienced reader, will surely throw you into boredom: he already watched this movie and knows that now “Titanic will crash into an iceberg” Alas, the playwrights did not invent anything new: night calls from an angry customer with a demand to correct the mistake, an exponential growth of requirements and revisions, dissatisfaction with the employer, general dissatisfaction with the state of affairs.

Verdict: not everyone, especially at the beginning of his career, is able to competently communicate with the customer. Sometimes it is on this front that key victories are achieved, guaranteeing a successful completion of the project. Not for nothing, in large companies, an entire cohort of analysts, sales engineers, department heads and other representatives of the IT fauna is built between an ordinary developer and a customer. Think about whether to subscribe to this, even for good money.

The painting "I'm a mother designer"

Disposition: you have a small but diverse team (front, back, testing), for various reasons the project has been skidding for a long time, but in recent months it has been flying at full sail to meet the deadline. The customer is either a large corporation, or a state at all, and his representative periodically asks to show the result of his work in the format of a demo on Skype. The head of the frontend holds a show and it looks like Steve Jobs has moved into him - in the end the customer will leave forever hungry and reckless. Beautiful speech as if lulling others who turned off the microphone ... The lull before the storm. Again this manner of narration, I can do nothing.

Reality: sharply, like a dagger strike, the customer throws the question: “Why isn't your delete button where the edit button is?”. ( - developer, - customer)

-R: "So we were guided by layouts that agree .."
-Z: "Yes, this is inconvenient, transfer it."
Slow echo approval.
-Z: "Is it possible that each user can customize the location of the buttons?"
-R: "Yes, but maybe we are first .."
-Z "And what have you got here?" This tab, it’s better to make it collapsible. ”
-R: “Yes, of course, then we will think how to process it.”
-Z: "Well, of course it is better to think about color, maybe blue here will be more suitable."
By the end of an hour, all those present understand that they are not able to find so much canvas.

Verdict: a classic of the genre. The moral of this story is that sometimes you need to be able to say no, sometimes admit your mistakes, and sometimes stand your ground firmly. How exactly to act depends on the specific situation. If you always have a "dashing and silly appearance" of a subordinate of Peter's decree, then the project risks being unfinished, the transaction is frustrated. But the most important issue here is not “how to proceed,” but “who to enter.” We will try to find the answer in the conclusion.

Total

Most often, the developer does not know how to talk with the customer and in both situations the problem of lack or insufficiency of control is visible. It affects not only the development process, but also the fate of the entire event as a whole. Only the presence of that very “filter of ideas”, the skilled worker correctly allocating resources, setting the correct dates and answering uncomfortable questions will allow the developer not to measure the hat of the project manager and focus on his work.