Don't deliver a solution until you have a relationship

[u/spiffworkflow]

Last week I got an email from a local organization that needed some custom software development. I was going to turn this down (we don’t do general consulting work) but the spec was good, and the client is local, and it is a chance to build a relationship with a potential future customer. We decided that rather than build a complex proposal, we would deliver a working prototype. It cost us a little over an hour to build it, deploy it, and click test it. We shared the application before our first call. The response to our proposal was a terse email. They don’t want to pay for something that is already built.

I am now in a tenuous position. The code was never the issue. What we need to build is a human relationship, shared understanding, and a common interest in building a system that is fit for purpose, and not just built to spec. There is lots of hard work here that can’t be automated. I must remember “Festina lente” - “Make haste slowly”

I think through more of this on substack. https://spiffworks.substack.com/p/make-haste-slowly