Feedback Cycles

When my wife and I are forced to leave our Condo / Office (despite my best efforts, this usually happens a least once every couple weeks), we need to crate our dog Oscar lest we come back to an apartment full of destroyed footwear. Although Oscar willingly spends plenty of time in his crate otherwise, happily sleeping there when our tossing at night kicks him off the bed, the command 'Kennel up', immediately puts Oscar into soulfull, sad eyes mode - letting us know that we are taking all the joy from his life.

At least, that was my anthropomorphic explanation of his behavior. Turns out, by standing completely still, and looking up at us with puppy-dog eyes, Oscar will immediately get himself picked up, apologized to, petted for a little while, and lovingly placed in his cage. 

As it turns out - my wife and I were screwing up the feedback cycle.

Oscar wasn't responding to the command, but instead to our reaction of it. The problem wasn't him, it was us. In order to fix the cycle, we secretly placed a treat into his kennel before commanding him to 'Kennel up', and coax him into his kennel without picking him up. In a short period of time, we managed to correct his behavior by fixing our reactions to it.

What does this have to do with Web Development? Nothing really, but it has everything to do with managing clients (No, I'm not calling clients Dogs). Letting clients get away with over-the-top last minute demands, while it may seem like the right idea,will invariably land you in hot water with them and other clients. There's only so many hours is the day, and pushing off scheduled work to make an ill-considered, ill-advised change to a website or piece of code may placate one client temporarily, but will almost guarantee something else gets left in the destructive wake of that last minute job. It might be QA testing, it might be another client's Milestone (nicely scheduled two weeks previously), or it might be a meeting with a potential client that you are forced to reschedule. In my experience, most often it is actually that client's work that ends up taking the hit because there isn't time to go through the normal design/development, approval, testing and deployment cycle. It might be a little thing, like an incorrect phone number on an ad. Or a big thing, like a crucial website failure over the weekend that gets everyone riled up and pointing fingers. But without anyone stepping back, it's easy to let the cycle repeat itself over and over again (A la Deploy! Deploy! Deploy! ).

By allowing clients to get away with this behavior on a consistent basis you are letting your clients harm their business and your business for no good reason. The client doesn't necessarily benefit either, as errors and bugs will creep into the final product and your client's reputation can suffer. Clients won't necessarily be able to see that big picture, all they see is your quick turnaround time and assume everything is good to go. Unless you can convince them that slowing down is better for everyone, the last minute demands won't stop. 

Sometimes a client's last minute work can't be helped for some reason or another, but as you're throwing together that needs-to-be-done email campaign and corresponding landing page at 3:30 on a friday, ask yourself if it really needs to be this way, or if you haven't created the proper feedback incentive.