Difficult Decision

Explain a difficult professional decision that you made and discuss, with the benefit of hindsight, whether you would decide differently in similar situations in the future

Once I was working in project for a client with dynamic business requirements, we were building online website that will be used in service launch campaign for 30 days, we were having requirements changing every other day from the client marketing team, with client IT team nervous about delivery dates. There were two approaches

1. Delivering simple module with less configuration on time based on current requirements, scarifying long-term success of the project.

2. Negotiating and educating the client that probably more complex configurable module is needed and this will result in few days of delay but on the long run the module will meet the dynamic requirements of the marketing team.

Second approach was chosen, with the decision that if the client was not convinced then we will choose to cancel the project, it is either win-win or no deal. This was first project with the client, My Company was promised with several projects coming if we succeed in this one. The decision was not easy with a lot of internal debate inside my team.

For me I believed that going with first approach my company will be in a win situation on the short term, however it will be lose on the long-term.

Unfortunately with the client tight timeline and other competitors in the scene we lost the project, it was critical situation for the company, however everyone was convinced that we took the right decision.

My company started follow up emails, a few weeks later we got business proposal accepted by the same client. And it was the real beginning for a series of 8 successful profitable projects.

This situation strengthens below values whenever I engage with clients

* If it is not Win\Win situation then let us agree to disagree in professional way that places long term customer satisfaction in first place.

* Integrity builds long and strong client relation even if the decisions were sound un-popular at the beginning.

* Follow-up is the name of the game.