[thelist] Your opinion: managing clients who miss deadlines

[erik mattheis]

The honest thing here is that if a client doesn't meet a deadline, the
timeline needs to be reset and if the client doesn't understand that or
won't accept it on it's face, there's no choice of words or clauses that
will make them accept that.

I usually have the luxury of a project manager between me and the client,
but the culture here is to accept that some clients are easier to work with
than others. As well as accept that you're going to be at work past midnight
about once a month, ha ha! Seriously.

On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 3:53 PM, Matt Warden <mwarden at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 4:41 PM, erik mattheis <gozz at gozz.com> wrote:
> > All our delivery dates are contingent upon the client's delivery/approval
> > dates. I would think any other kind of arrangement would be inequitable.
>
> I did not read his message as saying he's worried about being blamed
> for missed delivery dates when input from clients is delayed. That's a
> relatively tiny issue and, as you say, it's not hard to make the
> argument that delivery dates must be pushed, even if that wasn't
> explicit in your contract.
>
> The issue, as I read it, is that it is difficult to manage utilization
> of himself or his team when there are these kinds of delays.
> --
> Matt Warden
> http://mattwarden.com
>
>
-- 
Erik Mattheis

http://www.flickr.com/gelk