Clients Want to Be Agile…

One of the recent meetings involved establishing (by me, MS) a way to collaborate with a client (details intentionally slightly modified or omitted, though based on a real case). The client (K) said:

Client (K): This is a very serious undertaking and considerable costs are expected. To be honest, our sponsor has serious doubts about this amount and will not be able to spend it. The project is quite innovative, and it’s unclear how the market will respond…

Me (MS): That’s actually fitting because we can propose a different way of collaboration. The entire system is indeed a significant investment and quite risky, as the product may simply not catch on. Let’s look at what is the essence of the system… perhaps this will be the part that suggests what to do next.

(Several dozen minutes of joint analysis and discussion)

Me (MS): Great! So XYZ is what will attract customers; everything else is secondary. We call this the core business of this system. So let’s do this: let’s contract this first part, and for the other parts, we’ve presented rough estimates. After these works, it will become clear how accurate they are. But most importantly, after implementing the core, we will see how the market reacts, gather feedback, and then make further decisions.

Client (K): Okay. That looks quite promising. We will risk only 1/4 of the entire initial amount. Interesting, I need to discuss this with the sponsor.

(… the client is hooked, and the competition stands no chance, offering in a traditional model - meanwhile, the client’s concept has changed :))

(Text translated and moved from original old blog automatically by AI. May contain inaccuracies.)