Potholes and Pragmatism
You're never too old to learn from your own mistakes.
Far better to learn from the misatkes of others.
Here are my mistakes, and the lessons I learned.
If you want to jump over my potholes ....
...read "Lessons from Deep in the Potholes".

Tuesday 27 September 2011

D+1 [now 1 day late]

The developers have sent me a preliminary website, based on the templates I sent.  It is absolutely dreadful. Monochrome, tasteless, vulgar and with  massive BUY NOW and ADD TO SHOPPING CART buttons right in the middle of the screens.  It’s worse than a cheap supermarket’s closing down sale!

My reply – verbatim:

Ben,
This is so bad, I don't know where to start.
I provided a complete set of Wordpress resources. You didn't use them?
I provided a complete file of graphic resources - you didn't use them?
I provided a logical architecture - you didn't use it?
I provided correct English copy - you changed it into Chenglish?
I gave you a comprehensive brief - and you have ignored it.
Now there is no-one in your office to work with to fix this - and when your people arrive, I will have to go out.
We are already a day past deadline - and every hour we are late I am losing sales.
You need to fix this mess - and quickly.”

It turns out:

·         They didn’t know how to build sites in Wordpress. The Account Manager (salesman) took my order and dropped the engineers  right in it. They had to download the platform software and start learning it on the job.

·         They don’t understand how to select skins and colours – so the proposed site is all grey. Then they tell me that I bought the wrong template as it is all grey. (Later they worked out how to select colours, change page layouts and overlay skins!).

·         I called the engineer on his cell phone directly. He can’t speak English. He can translate emails, but he can’t hold a conversation. No wonder he can’t understand my brief. Everything is being done by trial and error.

No comments:

Post a Comment