Decoding the Client Expectation

One of the major themes of my blog is, of course, navigating the dangerous waters of working with your clients. I want to talk a little bit about about understanding your client’s expectations. You have to realize going into this thing that your client’s idea for their website is going to have a certain degree of uncertainty, and it’s your job to pick their brains and turn that into a well-formed project scope.

It’s like peeling back the layers of an onion. At first, your client will come at you with very large and sweeping ideas. You need to get excited about those ideas along with your client, and not immediately bum rush them with the reality and all the gory detail that will be required to inevitably implement their idea. Enjoy it with them, linger on it a bit.

Then, it’s time to swoop in like an eagle and break that thing down to size! (I have no idea where that eagle analogy came from but I’m running with it). You’ve got to be persistent in pushing them to define their idea. Get down to specifics, get down to numbers with them. Try to close all the open features - when they are foggy on something, you have to bring them back and nail it down. It’s a bit of an art form - doing this while at the same time remaining flexible to their needs as a business person to keep their ideas open. Ultimately, the project will fail if not clearly defined.

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