Last week I received a phone call of distress from one of our clients. The were asking for some advice regarding issues they were having with a Web Application that was developed for them by another company and was released into production the week before. Now I’m not going to name names, or even mention what Web Technology was used – this is not what this rant is about.

Introduction

The plea for help was pre-empted with a light-hearted exchange between the Client and I where the client jokingly blamed me for the predicament that they were currently in.

“You said late last year that you had a full schedule and that you were not taking on any new projects until February (resulting in them hiring these guys) [...] so it’s your fault!”

I know the Client very well and they are very reliant upon the technical consultants that they hire to provide direction and complete the project as they have no technical expertise themselves or technical staff internally. This Client needs to be taken good care of (of course, as do all clients) since they put total trust into the technical consultants that they hire and have no real input into the direction of the development aside from the business rules.

The problem is, with the exception of the Web Development company I work for, it seems as though they keep picking the wrong Web Development companies when they are not with us.

From what I hear, the web development companies they hire are full of hype and seem to be stepping into the projects without covering the usual bases. Now, for a company whose average project consists of Mission Critical Web Applications as opposed to your run of the mill Joomla CMS, Sugar CRMs or E-Commerce websites, this is very dangerous.

» Read more: Client Gets Screwed by Under skilled and disorganised Developers