I meant 'expert' as in the person responsible for the technical side. Not in the sense of 'they know everything they need to know all the time' or anything like that.
> I suspect/hope the situation is better elsewhere in the industry. :-)
I do freelance, client work. Alone and in (very?) small teams. Typically my/our clients only have a superficial understanding of everything technical (if at all). Trust often needs to be earned.
One way to gain trust is being creative/optimistic and explaining feasible possibilities and strategies. Another one is being pragmatic and not selling them something they don't need, or might not need.
And then the most important one is to have conversations about their problems and wishes. Showing that you understand them by asking questions and writing a specification. And explaining your (iterative) workflow: "Let's figure this part out after we've done this other part." I guess this is the "domain" part of the process.
My experience is that if trust is in danger then the work is less valuable, less fun and less sustainable. Indications of this are things like we discussed before and similar:
- Trying to measure effort instead of rewarding value.
- Nitpicking, bikeshedding and other distractions.
- Overstepping their expertise (typical for UI design, a bit less for programming)
Now most of my interactions are good but sometimes I get the above. We're actually discussing of doing more upfront communication work in the offers and initial discussions to prevent these things (even by filtering out clients/collaborators) and to set a tone. Because again, this is unsustainable on multiple levels and it never ends well...
Thanks for sharing your experiences! This is good advice. I also agree that, at times, some "filtering" must occur with regard to who we work with/for.
> I suspect/hope the situation is better elsewhere in the industry. :-)
I do freelance, client work. Alone and in (very?) small teams. Typically my/our clients only have a superficial understanding of everything technical (if at all). Trust often needs to be earned.
One way to gain trust is being creative/optimistic and explaining feasible possibilities and strategies. Another one is being pragmatic and not selling them something they don't need, or might not need.
And then the most important one is to have conversations about their problems and wishes. Showing that you understand them by asking questions and writing a specification. And explaining your (iterative) workflow: "Let's figure this part out after we've done this other part." I guess this is the "domain" part of the process.
My experience is that if trust is in danger then the work is less valuable, less fun and less sustainable. Indications of this are things like we discussed before and similar:
- Trying to measure effort instead of rewarding value.
- Nitpicking, bikeshedding and other distractions.
- Overstepping their expertise (typical for UI design, a bit less for programming)
Now most of my interactions are good but sometimes I get the above. We're actually discussing of doing more upfront communication work in the offers and initial discussions to prevent these things (even by filtering out clients/collaborators) and to set a tone. Because again, this is unsustainable on multiple levels and it never ends well...