Here are a few mistakes that can have the greatest impact on a project and yet can be easily avoided.
1. Asking the wrong questions during the RFP process
The goal of the RFP (Request for Proposal) process is to meet the agency, see how they work and what makes them special. It’s a two-sided process: not only do you (as a client) pick the agency, but the agency picks you as well. Be realistic with the proposal deadlines if you want them to do their homework, research your business, and come up with a detailed proposal. Don’t ask for it by tomorrow EOD just because you have other agencies in the pipeline.
There are a few types of questions we are always asked, and it’s not something that will make or break the project.
For example, asking the question “What is your hourly rate?” first is pointless because that question is totally irrelevant. Maybe our rate is $50 but we’re extremely slow and inefficient, and maybe our rate is $500 but we deliver bug-free, easily maintainable code weeks ahead of schedule within a fixed budget and with lifetime support.
What you should really be asking are questions like “What could you do with a $150,000 budget?” or “What is your typical project budget?”, if you want to keep your cards hidden.
2. Making the wrong budget allocation
Most clients expect a fixed budget at the beginning of the project. And that’s fine — it makes perfect sense from the client’s perspective. However, it’s unrealistic. The typical input for the budgeting process is a written specification for the project. But a two-page Word document with a bunch of bullets can’t possibly be enough to scope out the next four to six months of work, right?
Ask for a budgetary estimate at the beginning.
The agency is expected to have experience and be able to say whether the project will be somewhere between $50,000 and $70,000, or $100,000 and$120,000.
Crunching the wrong numbers.
Another problem is incorrectly allocating the budget for the project. We’ve seen clients spend all of their budgets on the first version and completely forget about the version 2, changes and updates, or marketing.
3. Not communicating business goals (or even worse, not having them).
And those goals should shape the whole project and affect where we focus most. We simply need to understand your business goals and what drives you forward.
Why are you doing the project? What’s the motivation behind it? What drives it?
4. Not allowing enough time for the creative process
Clients tend to push for first builds, as they want to see progress and show it within their company. But the reality is that the first production-ready lines of code won’t be written right away (we might do a coded prototype or two of some advanced features).
In the design phase, changes are more than welcome, and there is a steady review process where everyone is asked for feedback and that feedback is incorporated into the final designs. Changes in the development are expensive, and in the UX phase they don’t cost more than a few clicks.
Help us help you.
Ask the right questions, allocate your budget correctly, communicate your business goals, and allow the creative process to flow.
Courtesy of TheNextWeb
