A Woeful Tale

Brian slammed the car door a little harder than was necessary as he returned from the client meeting late in the day. Nobody saw the gesture, but it felt good nonetheless. He was fed up with this client, with this project, and maybe this career choice. Being a project manager for Electron Cowboys, a web development company, had its benefits - like only having to wear a tie when he had client meetings. But after this project, he seriously considered throwing in the towel and finding a job with less stress.

The most frustrating part was that the project had started off so well...

Sitting around OmniTechCorp's conference table, they discussed the goals and objectives for the new website. The client group was made up of the Vice President, the Human Resources director, the head of Information Technology, and John, the Director of Marketing and primary lead for the project. Brian and a few others from Electron Cowboys had begun to gather background information, inquiring about the client's goals and objectives. Everyone at OmniTechCorp agreed that the site needed a "new look," one that would be more "cutting edge" and "interactive." It was difficult to fully define the project because each person had his or her own idea of what the site should include. By the end of the meeting they had nailed down about 80% of their needs. The remaining 20% would be worked out later or added in a second phase of development. Armed with a basic understanding of the client's business, and a fleshed out site map, they returned to the studio to put together a proposal for the project.

Brian had written a great proposal. It was very detailed and reiterated the goals and objectives from the meeting. It established the scope of the project and estimated a budget and schedule. This was a big client and Electron Cowboys desperately wanted the job, so he had kept his estimate as tight as possible. A few days later he delivered the proposal to John.

John was both excited and worried about taking the lead on the web project. He had a lot of ideas about the new site, but since he had not been involved in the previous site's development, he didn't know exactly what to expect. Then again, who did? The web itself was relatively young, and nobody really knew what to do with it anyway. Besides, he had written an extensive request for proposal and was applying due diligence to the vendor selection. He'd worked through many other projects creating brochures, TV and radio commercials, and new brand identities. This was just another marketing tool like all the rest.

John invested a lot of time in meeting with prospective vendors. Some he ruled out as too inexperienced, others not creative enough. All of them seemed to recommend a different technical approach, but he would let IT worry about the technical issues. He didn't know an ASP from an ODBC and he didn't care to.

Electron Cowboys had made an excellent presentation. They had been around for a while and he really liked the sites they had developed. If they came back with a reasonable estimate, they would be the frontrunner for the project.

Brian and John met to review the proposal. The estimate was a little higher than John had anticipated, but he decided that they would spend the additional money, hoping that it would cover some of the "undefined items" in the proposal. The following week, John contacted Brian and told him that that Electron Cowboys had won the job and that he would sign off on the proposal to begin work on the project.

Hanging up after the phone call with John, Brian announced the new project win to the staff and a mini-celebration ensued. Having won the project, he fleshed out a rough schedule that outlined the first deliverables as the initial home page layouts. They were to be presented in two weeks. Sitting down with their designer, Abigail, he laid out the site map that went along with the proposal. She had many questions, such as "what does the client mean by "cutting edge" and "interactive"? Since Brian couldn't answer these questions he had Abigail start her layouts based on the site map and the clients existing logo.

It would be easier to have the client respond to a layout then to try and get them to quantify their subjective expectations about the design. "Let's just try and pin down the look and feel at this point," he told her. With the site map in hand she developed three layouts to present to the client. Brian and the development team really liked the layouts, especially the second one, and so they posted them to the client's project page for review. When Brian called John he noted carefully that they should only be considering look and feel right now, not content or functionality. They would get to those details later.

John and the web committee looked at the layouts. They were less than impressed with the work but sort of liked layout three. The HR director liked the navigation bar on layout one, so someone suggested that they take the navigation bar from layout one and use it in layout number three. John called Brian and communicated that they weren't really comfortable with the designs. The committee felt like they were not quite "there yet."

Brian had the unenviable task of telling the development team about the client's lackluster response. "This is definitely going to take the wind out of their sails," he worried. Their disappointment was evident when they were told that the client wasn't impressed (OmniTechCorp did not even consider layout two, everyone's favorite). Abigail, the designer, had an "I told you so" look on her face because she had asked for more detail before she even began to design. Brian still didn't have much direction for Abigail to help her get closer to what the client would like. After a few more rounds of back and forth (and a lot of wasted time), the client finally gave tentative approval to a look and feel, with a few qualifications regarding content and functionality that had not yet been fully defined. Brian, frustrated with the design process, and a little irritated with the client, just counted his blessings for finally getting past the design phase. "The project should proceed much more smoothly from here," he thought. Abigail was burnt out on this client and couldn't wait to get on to something else.

John, however, was still nervous. He didn't expect the design process to take so long and, although they did finally agree on a layout, much of the content and functionality they expected in the new site was not yet reflected in the designs. Brian assured him that these details would be worked out, but John felt uneasy giving approval without a clear definition of these items.

Looking at the budget, Brian was a bit disturbed. They had gone over on the design phase by almost double their original estimate. All those extra meetings, conference calls, and rounds of design took a huge bite into the budget. Should he talk to John about this, perhaps ask for more money? "No," he decided, "they should be able to make up some of this time in the HTML, programming, and integration phases."

Now that Abigail's layouts were approved, the project was handed off to the studio where the production staff converted the designs to HTML. While doing the conversion, the lead developer needed to talk to Brian. The layouts needed to be adjusted in order to work smoothly in Internet Explorer 5. If the layout had to be maintained in Internet Explorer 5, the coding would be much more complicated and take longer to produce. The developer also had some good suggestions to make the interface a little clearer and coding easier, but it would require a slight change in the design. Brian felt a sinking feeling that, rather than making up some time in HTML, he was about to go over budget here too. Brian nixed the design adjustments. It would be much better to take a little longer coding than to go back to the client to approve more design adjustments, especially after all they had been through to get them approved in the first place.

The HTML conversion was complete and Brian asked John and the web committee to look at the templates. The president of the company used an older version of AOL and the site templates "looked weird" on his browser.

Brian explained that this couldn't be fixed without compromising the design and incurring significant costs for re-coding the templates.

Brian and John finally compromised on making a few slight design modifications so that the site would look acceptable in the older AOL browser. Brian finally hinted at the possibility of going over budget based on the many rounds of design changes. Additionally, Brian reminded John that most of the content for the site was overdue and that this would affect the schedule and could also impact the budget. John was confused and angry. He didn't understand how Electron Cowboys could design a site that doesn't even work in AOL. "Doesn't everyone use AOL," he thought. "And now they want more money. We already agreed to pay more than our original budget called for! And what is he talking about -providing content late', I'm not even sure what the content is supposed to be!"

Brian's fears were confirmed as he reviewed the budget status. He had gone over on HTML programming by almost as much as he had gone over on design. At this point they were losing money fast on this project. He would have to get the budget increased, or else be extremely strict protecting against any further project creep. He needed to get this job done as quickly as possible to limit their losses.

The client slowly began delivering the content needed to finish the site. But each time they received content, new problems arose. The production and programming staff had many questions and were confused by what they received. Brian had to answer all sorts of questions. "What do we do with all these charts? Is this their -brief application?' It's three pages long! What section does this stuff belong to? Are we ever going to get the photos for the product section?" Brian had to put a stop to project creep and eliminate any additional or out-of-scope work. It was time for a sit down with John to work these issues out. At the meeting Brian explained to John that they had not budgeted for a three-page form and that the content they had received was much more complex than they thought it would be. "Complex tables take much longer to code than straight-forward text," he explained. The conversation did not go well, but after a few heated exchanges, John agreed to cut back some of their content and pay more for the application form that was longer then Electron Cowboys had anticipated. Brian agreed to allow some of the longer HTML pages and complex tables that John needed in the first release. Brian got back to the shop and gave the final instructions to the development team. They could now complete the integration phase and get the site done. While he and John did come to agreement, he was still frustrated and worried about how far over budget they were - he didn't even want to look. John had to get approval for the extra money and explain to the committee why some content was not going to be on the site. He was deeply embarrassed about having to do this. But if he could just get this project over with, it would be worth it. The committee was disgusted that they were being asked to pay more, to ultimately get less than they had originally expected. The explanation of how complex tables were different from simple text did not seem to satisfy them.

Finally the site was ready for a beta release and the client could actually click around a working version of the website. They had been waiting for this and everyone was eagerly anticipating seeing the "real thing." That's when the rumbling began. The rest of the company was invited to review the site before it "went live." John got bombarded with input. "What if we have the products area link across to a form page that will send an e-mail directly to sales, and maybe the form can embed the product numbers in the e-mail." "I thought the employee section was going to be divided up into departments."

"When will the product details be linked up?" "How come I get an error when I try and select this option on the form page?" "Is this form going to be secure?" "The site looks weird on my computer and takes too long to load." John compiled a list of edits, bugs, typos, and problems and sent them to Brian for correction.

Brian couldn't believe it. "How can they expect us to fix typos and edit copy that they provided to us in the first place!" The development team reacted to the list as well. "Where will this new section go? There is no place for it within the existing navigation bar and it adds a third level to the depth of content." "Are we supposed to rework the entire navigation system and adjust every HTML page we've coded?" Ready to give up, Brian retreated to his office. "They'll go through the roof if I ask for more money," he thought. After thinking through all the possible things he might say to the client he finally decided to just do it and get it over with. "It would take more energy fighting than just getting it done."

Finally, the project was done. Brian reluctantly looked at the budget and was stunned to see that they had more than tripled their original time estimate. The development team was stressed as well. They had come up with some unflattering pseudonyms for the client during the process that continued to surface whenever the client's name was mentioned. Brian took solace in the fact that they had gotten the job done, and that they had a nice piece for their portfolio. Besides, they had extended themselves so far for the client that they should be able to make some of the cost up through maintenance and future projects (even though the development team would rather not work for this client ever again). He hoped that the client would be a good future reference as well.

John was also glad the project was over with. He was still angry that it went over budget and took twice as long as originally scheduled. The committee wasn't thrilled with the end result, and every time someone in the company complained about bugs John took the heat for the whole thing. Talk was already floating around that the site should be redesigned. Of course they would need to find a different developer. They were already planning on taking the maintenance of the site in-house.