Thanks for sharing these stories. I'm sure we can all relate to at least some of these issues (some more than others -- I've been there/done that on almost all of them! ;).
Some of the product knowledge issues we've been fortunate enough to avoid since we write our own software, but being young (19) and very inexperienced when I started I certainly learned the hard way not to over-promise and under-deliver.
I once had a "Mildred" experience myself where the person in charge on the client's end wasn't unqualified but was constantly changing his mind. Almost daily, he sent us new design plans that had nothing to do with what we were supposed to be making.
After a conversation with his boss about how the project needed to stay on track, no change. After a heavy conversation about how the project was going to fail if they couldn't get a handle on him, no change. His boss actually confided that everyone else was too busy, and that the person we delt with worked from home because if he came into the office everyone else would leave so they wouldn't have to deal with him. Strange...
So the project failed of course, and they decided to not pay us for a chunk of time at the end. I still managed to pay my contract developers out of pocket, but I definitely learned to avoid ever letting such a scenario play out for the amount of time it did.
We actually had another project recently that initially seemed like a fairly simple document manager, but a few meetings in the client had basically explained that they were planning to run their whole business on this thing, all client communications, accounting and everythin. We ended up turning the project down, which was ultimately the best thing to do for everyone.
Some of the product knowledge issues we've been fortunate enough to avoid since we write our own software, but being young (19) and very inexperienced when I started I certainly learned the hard way not to over-promise and under-deliver.
I once had a "Mildred" experience myself where the person in charge on the client's end wasn't unqualified but was constantly changing his mind. Almost daily, he sent us new design plans that had nothing to do with what we were supposed to be making.
After a conversation with his boss about how the project needed to stay on track, no change. After a heavy conversation about how the project was going to fail if they couldn't get a handle on him, no change. His boss actually confided that everyone else was too busy, and that the person we delt with worked from home because if he came into the office everyone else would leave so they wouldn't have to deal with him. Strange...
So the project failed of course, and they decided to not pay us for a chunk of time at the end. I still managed to pay my contract developers out of pocket, but I definitely learned to avoid ever letting such a scenario play out for the amount of time it did.
We actually had another project recently that initially seemed like a fairly simple document manager, but a few meetings in the client had basically explained that they were planning to run their whole business on this thing, all client communications, accounting and everythin. We ended up turning the project down, which was ultimately the best thing to do for everyone.