Re: Client from Hell redux

["Sharon Burton-Hardin" <sharonburton -at- earthlink -dot- net>]

Oh, I agree that I screwed up part of this. I thought that I was in close
contact with the project manager but it is the developers who are reluctant
to provide the detailed feedback. They just said that it was not technical
enough and told us to look at another manual that they liked - literally all
the feedback they were willing to give us, despite me practically begging
for more substance. We did that, reworked the 2 manuals to be in alignment
with the one they wanted us to look at and they still didn't like it. So
here we are.

Retrospectively, I should have been very (VERY) firm that we needed detailed
feedback and could not move forward with it. But it looked like the other
manual was a good template for us to work from. And we thought that we were
on track - even informally ran the 2 manuals by 2 members of our target
audience who thought that they were generally OK.

I am still puzzling over exactly what we didn't do that they wanted. I
expect to see that in the drafts we should get in a week. I also expect that
it is either WAY off from what they were telling us or it is one little
thing that was not there that they thought was critical. We had 4 other
manuals go really well and are about to be approved, it is just these last 2
that are enough to make me and my writers crazy.

sharon

Sharon Burton-Hardin
Anthrobytes Consulting
909-369-8590
www.anthrobytes.com
Vice-president, Programs of the Inland Empire chapter of the STC
www.iestc.org

----- Original Message -----
From: Stephen Arrants <stephena -at- compbear -dot- com>
To: TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Sent: Tuesday, 06 June, 2000 10:55 AM
Subject: Re: Client from Hell redux


|
| If I was the client, I'd take responsibility for my part in ignoring the
| process. But from what you're telling us, you're also responsible for not
| tracking more closely what was and wasn't going on.  When a client is
"vague
| about what was wrong" and reviews come back that aren't detailed, you need
| to address problems at that point, not this late in the process.
|
| Having an outline,   a process, a schedule, a list of deliverables is
great,
| but without regular, detailed contact and feedback from the client you're
| just setting yourself up for anxiety and failure.
|