1 Excellent

It’s sometimes a lot to take on, having to set expectations and so on in the board room. But it’s crucial. I’ve bitten my tongue before and wished I’d spoken up, because I got bit in the rump later when the client made unrealistic demands as the project wore on. I’ve also found that you’ll get more respect from potential clients and partners if you set clear boundaries and expectations early.

Good luck if you run into the know-it-all dev guy / gal on staff…

posted at 06:14 am on May 8, 2007 by Adam Audette

2 Do not educate, advise

Good points in the article. But I think the headline is wrong.

There is no way to educate a middle aged decision maker!

But of course you should advise your client or stakeholder. You should tell him about risks and consequences of the different options and advise him to take the best solution you can provide. Those stakeholders will gather the limited information they can soak up and make a decision based on this information. They do not want to be educated (at least most of them). You are the specialist and you have to propose the best solution for the stakeholders needs.

posted at 10:13 am on May 8, 2007 by Andi B.

4 Educate

Shane i fully agree with You educate it’s for me the most important thing and it’s not good when alot of people forget this. btw. Thanks Shane for great article.
Greetings

posted at 12:53 pm on May 8, 2007 by Tomek Gorski

5 XHTML vs. HTML

XHTML as the preferred markup language for the web

I don’t think that’s necessarily true. There have been a number of articles published regarding why XHTML served as text/html may be broken.

posted at 04:20 pm on May 8, 2007 by Peter Foti

6 The Person Paying is Always Right

“Good luck if you run into the know-it-all dev guy / gal on staff…”

There are times when the most valuable skill to have is the ability to just do what they want you to do — regardless of how wrong it is — and move on; the ability to do the “wrong” thing and not let it impugn your sense of self-worth, or otherwise “bother” you.

It is nice to think that if someone hires you as an “expert,” that they will follow your advice. In reality, this is very often not the case, however. When this happens, you can’t get bent out of shape.

More on topic, stakeholders don’t always want to be educated; they don’t want to be told that their worldview is in error; they don’t want to be guided to the “best” solution. They just want someone to do what they tell them to do. If you can’t walk away from these jobs for whatever reason, then you must be able to work against the grain of everything you know to be right and true, without destroying your own soul in the process.

posted at 04:59 pm on May 8, 2007 by Stephen Conant

7 Just give 'em what they want (they'll be sorry)

I once worked for a really big media company. Was in charge of web development for a few hundred mini web sites. This was back when lucky people had 800×600 screens, and nobody had high-bandwidth connections at home. CSS wasn’t even mainstream yet. Anyways, the people in sales bugged me day in and day out to “really jazz up the designs!”

“Make it snazzy! Sizzle! Need some Flash! Booyah! Why can’t we do something like this guy’s personal site? Hover over that menu. Hear that sound effect? F’in awesome!” No matter how much I tried educating them about scalability, usability, profitability, maintain-ability, no matter how many meetings or case studies, they never listened.

They were even sending me those Website Mechanic reports (remember them?), trying to tell me everything i was coding wrong. “Did you know our site isn’t accessible for blind people on UNIX mainframes?”

When I left on vacation or business trips, they’d coax a designer to sneak in a Flash intro. Sigh.

I eventually left the company, and started consulting. They became my first client. As a consultant, I got paid by the hour. I gave them everything they ever asked me for when I was working there full time. Flash, JavaScript, DHTML, streaming music. Everything. No matter how stupid, I gave it to them. Did I have any ethical problems with this? Honestly, I didn’t. They sincerely looked happy. Kinda like in the movies, when some dude has to kill his brother or pet dog. They make them really, really happy, then when they’re not looking—-bam. He’s put out of his misery. It was actually a good experience, because I got to learn a lot about all the bloated technology I could never use in real life.

After one month (and thousands of dollars), they learned their lesson and went back to the old way. I mean they really learned their lesson, and spent some serious time learning how to keep things simple. They hired full-time people who were more fanatic about efficiency than I was. They also fired the people who were constantly asking for stupid stuff. Nowadays, I’m actually impressed by what the company is doing. They make my own work look bloated and slow.

I thought they’d hate me after all that. But they just look at it as an experiment. “Hey, we tried. Now let’s go back to what works.”

Sometimes you just gotta give them all the stupid stuff they ask for. Let it fail. Then they’ll listen to you after that.

Maybe you can just do all this on a beta site, to minimize your company’s risk.

But in my experience, nothing works better than to just give them exactly what they want. All those educating meetings? They’re just frustrating, and keep you from doing the work you enjoy.

Do it, let it fail, call it an “experiment that we all learned from” then move on.

posted at 05:23 pm on May 8, 2007 by Ben Chestnut

8 Untitled

“There are times when the most valuable skill to have is the ability to just do what they want you to do—regardless of how wrong it is—and move on…”

Well, you just completely contradict yourself then:

More on topic, stakeholders don’t always want to be educated.. If you can’t walk away from these jobs for whatever reason, then you must be able to work against the grain of everything you know to be right and true, without destroying your own soul in the process.”

Dramatic phrasing aside, which one is it? Do what they want you to do, regardless of how wrong it is — or work against the grain of everything you know to be right and true?

Sounds like there’s some soul destruction in the picture, too?

posted at 07:49 pm on May 8, 2007 by Adam Audette

9 No ...

The first quote said, in essence, “Do what they tell you even if you think it’s wrong.” The second, “If you can’t just refuse the job, then you must do what they tell you (which you think is wrong).” No contradiction there, IMO.

So what’s your point? It seems you don’t like what I said (or how I said it), but your own point eludes me … maybe you’re just feeling contradictory today? :)

posted at 08:51 pm on May 8, 2007 by Stephen Conant

10 You know what I mean...

Maybe they don’t know what you mean. How often do clients you’re advising/educating seem to understand, while their silence is simply perceived as wisdom? Be careful with this, because it may be up to you to really find out what the group understands to make the project a success.

And why let a project fail just to prove your point? I believe it’s important to establish a level of understanding on production teams, while being sensitive to each individual (whether the know-it-all developer or silently wise). Be diligent, and patiently concise so everyone has the opportunity to understand. If nobody is cooperating in the first place, then maybe it’s time to abandon the project before it can fail. None of us want to end up looking like a know-it-all as well, or like a fool who didn’t get his point across professionally.

posted at 08:55 pm on May 8, 2007 by Kevin Davison

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