[consulting] "Superwoman"

[forest mars]

On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 3:44 PM, David Hazel <dave at hazelconsulting.com>wrote:

> I don't know about "superwoman" explicitly, but I had a conversation with a
> woman with a similar story, although she was having trouble hiring a
> developer, as opposed to hiring too many.
>
> She was somewhat befuddled that everyone else she talked to had
> disappeared.
>
> I had a long phone chat with her about her project, after signing her NDA
> because she was scared someone would steal her idea. I explained to her that
> most ideas are not new and that there were probably a couple other folks
> working on that same idea right now and that what mattered was the execution
> (and hiring a competent developer and/or team).
>


Most stories I've heard about or experienced like this tend to fall into
either or both of the following categories or both:

1. Client's budget not proportional to amount of work involved.

"This will be really easy for someone like you which is good since we don't
have a very big budget."

It can be maddeningly difficult to get them to see that expecting such a
huge payoff for so little investment may not be realistic.


2. Client doesn't want to describe their project to any prospective
developers because someone might steal their idea.

This makes it very difficult to show them that there are already 10 websites
that do the exact same thing, since they won't tell you what it is  they
want to do. I've experienced this more times than I can remember, enough to
have learned to soften the blow when I show them the other pre-existing
sites out there. More often than not, they give up their idea at that point,
because it was based on an unrealistic sense of first-to-market,  equating
it with the element of 'surprise' and this wish to surprise the world was
their project's sole driving force.

The Trifecta is of course the person who has no budget but is convinced that
their idea is so novel that success is virtually guaranteed, even though
they can't tell you what it is they need, and can't pay you for it even if
they could.

But that last part is just saad, or am I the only one who takes it
personally when someone who falls into the above categories listens to
everything you tell them, and then says they will be doing their top-secret
earth-shatering new web development in.... Dreamweaver?

I die a little each time that happens…


ƒ. mars
-- 
"In theory, theory and practice are exactly the same.
In practice, they're completely different."
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>
> Ultimately she wanted someone local and went with a Dreamweaver "developer"
> she knew. I wished her the best of luck and told her to please call me if
> she needed some help with the project down the road.
>
> -dave
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 12:33 PM, John Fletcher <net at saltwebsites.com>wrote:
>
>> The discussion about client / service provider relations was very
>> interesting and reminded me of something: remember "Superwoman" who wrote to
>> this list requesting help as she had been abandoned by various Drupal
>> developers? Does anyone know what happened to her and whether the story had
>> a happy ending?
>>
>> John
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> consulting mailing list
>> consulting at drupal.org
>> http://lists.drupal.org/mailman/listinfo/consulting
>>
>
>
>
> --
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>
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>


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-- 
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