That phase of any project that, if not pinned down and given the attention it needs, can trip us up big time. Chatting with other small agencies and self-employed WordPress developers and designers, I’ve found we all share experiences of differences between the client’s expectations and what we’ve priced and committed to delivering. If only we knew all the details upfront…
So for this talk I will gather as many experiences and ideas from as many of us as possible – from one man bands to the larger agencies, developers and designers – we all need to pin down Discovery!
Discovering just what the client expects and all the things around being able to make that happen. That’s what we want to do.
The thing is, we all know this. Some include this already in their process and from this they have become successful (surely!!). Each of us has a horror story of the client’s expectations not being met because we did not understand quite what they had in mind; there was a mismatch and the client holds us accountable for that. Or what they want and expect is just not possible on their hosting. Or the client’s data needs significant translation to be usable.
Being clear at the start is essential. If we do this, document it, get the client to confirm that this document is what they want and understand they’re paying for, then we’re winning and so are they.