The Case: A customer wants to go live with a yet-to-be-made piece of software, but no later than March 1st
In the last 5 years, Payt has grown by an average of 50% per year. To maintain this growth in the future, many factors are important. A very important factor is that we do not provide custom solutions. Of course, we now have hundreds of settings that resemble custom work, but are not. If we create something, it must meet several requirements. For example, the software must be useful for more customers and preferably widely applicable. Additionally, the software must also be robust. What if we are 10 times larger, will this software still work? What is the chance that this software is so intertwined with other code that the newly created piece will inevitably break in the future?
That is why we have chosen to spend a lot of time on design and construction. But also on reviews by other developers and writing test scripts for every piece of code. Putting the development team under time pressure has very unpleasant consequences for Payt. You only experience them after about three years. When everyone has forgotten that management caused the problems three years earlier.
Now it sometimes happens that a customer only wants to go live when a new piece of functionality is included. And that must be before March 1st, otherwise, they will choose another provider. We can generate significant revenue if we secure that customer. We have not yet started building the software, and our lead developer expects it will be tight to meet the March 1st deadline if we immediately free someone up. In earlier years, we would have gone for it. The thought was that we would explain it if, unfortunately, we couldn’t finish it on time.
Now we thank the customer for their interest in Payt. And we explain in detail that it is unwise for us to commit to deadlines. Not only for the reasons mentioned earlier. You also bring in a customer who is used to demanding custom work and attaching a deadline to it. To our surprise, most customers then still choose to go live without the new functionality. And we gain a wonderfully motivated test customer for the software to be developed.
