Communication With Your Client: How Soon is Too Soon?
When is the best time to show a client where you are on their project? We have found ourselves in a few tricky situations over the years. You never quite know what kind of reaction you will get. After the unveiling, the range of responses you get when showing a work in progress can range from enthusiastic praise to lethargic indifference, to mass confusion to total disappointment.
client expectations
On a small to average sized project, it usually takes us about three to four months to go through strategy, design, development, and finally launch. Most clients want to know where their money is going and are eager to see where we are in the process. Now, we gladly show them; however, this was not always the case.
How to meet expectations by going agile
At LevelTen, we run an agile development process in two week sprints. At the end of every sprint, we show the client what work we completed during the last sprint and prioritize which items the client would like us to work on in the next sprint. Showing our progress every few weeks has almost completely eliminated any unpleasant surprises.
The bottom line is that it comes down to communication. We have found that the frequent communication required by our process keeps our team on track and our clients happy. ABC – Always Be Communicating.
