It serves me right for writing a blog post such as ‘How to avoid losing 150M Euro‘. Just to show you I get things wrong on projects, here’s three mistakes that I made (and should have known better). They all come from a Sales application that we’re doing for a client.
- Don’t forget that IT projects are routine for you, but is often new to you (Internal / External) clients. This is closely related to …
- Doing IT Projects is your day job, but when your clients will leave a meeting they will have a stack of phone calls to return (and Sales Targets to meet).
- Your clients will (and should) have no idea of any technical term. They should not care what Java, Oracle, Ajax, XML or JBoss is. Even semi-technical terms like ‘drop-down list’ should be checked and explained if necessary. Your job is to explain the solution(s). The client’s job is to explain what they want.
This blog post was going to be called ‘why IT people are like Lawyers’ in that we both speak a semi-English language not understood by 99% of the population. We’re often about as popular , and only slightly less expensive. That’s probably an issue for another day.
If you are only slightly less expensive than a lawyer, you are overpaid. (This is not a slight on you or your abilities - lawyers are grossly overpaid, ipso facto...) I don't know any IT people who make over $100 per hour, and I have never heard of any who make more than $150. I know of hundreds of lawyers in Canada alone who make over $250 an hour, and could probably generate a list of at least 100 in Toronto who make more than $500 per hour. Just a bit of perspective.
William,
Didn't know lawyers got paid *that* much. Still nobody likes paying for IT people either!
Paul
Looking at it another way, *you* may not get paid the same as a lawyer, but if you are working for a consultancy, it is easily possible the *client* is being charged that much :o(
Luckily (both for me and my clients) I tend to work as a *direct* consultant!
Paul , Technology in Plain English.
Wait until you meet the non-technical client with the desire to drive the technical solution platform. For instance, why do you need Java 5, we have WebSphere 5 that you can use instead. Great...
Ah clients - can't live with them, can't live without them :-)
I also like to say bad things about my clients... but... think a little about the IT world without them... wouldn't it be too boring?
Things would always be welldone and self-explanatory... and, surely, we would change our profession
;-)
Hi all!
Bye
Hello
G'night