How to Respond to Unexpected Incisive Questions from a Customer When Delivering Tech Projects

3 Min Read

You are a few months into a 1 year project for a customer and you discover you can't deliver the product in Windows like you originally agreed, it turns out you will need to shift to Linux.

You agree a meeting with the customer's Project Manager and Tech Lead, expecting to have to explain to them the technical details as to why you need to change and what steps you'll take. Instead, you get ambushed in the conference call by a Senior Director who is the Project Manager's boss' boss' boss.

They aggressively start asking you questions such as:

1. Why are we talking about this now and not before the project began?
2. What's changed that made you realise now we need to switch to Linux?
3. What are the cost implications for us? Are you paying for all of the time it will take to change this?
4. Why haven't you considered X, Y or Z possible solutions instead?
5. Why are you doing it in this way?
6. Why didn't you discover this sooner?
7. Why Linux and not Ubuntu?

The Executive is not actually interested in the technical reasons as to why you are changing the project. S/he only cares about 3 core thing: money, timeline, outcome.

Key words to use in such a meeting with a customer are:

"the way this change affects you is..."

"what this means for the timeline/milestones we agreed is..."

"the impact this change will have on the budget is..."

"the only difference will be..."

"it is good we identified this issue/incompatibility now, because if we adapt it now it means later on we will not have to..."

If the Executive attacks you with incisive tech questions, going around in circles

If you use the sentences above, you should be able to avoid getting into a situation where the executive on the customer side keeps picking on any explanation you give and attacks it. If however things spiral out of control, there is something you can do.

E.g. Customer asks "why are we talking about this now?" You might say "we discovered the big data set made it slower on Windows, hence the suggestion to shift to Linux." Customer could say: "so now you'll be doing a project on an OS you haven't delivered before, how will I know you won't get it wrong again? Why aren't you using Microsoft 360, I heard this would be a good system?".

One simple way you can get out of it is by swiftly answering the question, but then bridging to the answer they REALLY want to have which is: how will this affect the bottom line? (Money, Timeline, Outcome).

E.g. "We decided to shift to Linux because the data set is too big and in Windows it would be too slow to process, however this change will not add additional cost to the overall project, the outcome will be the same and the timeline will be only shifted by adding 2 weeks."

If you are a Tech Lead and have to tell a customer a problem came up and you will need to make a major change to the project, here’s what the customer will want to know:

1.   What is the problem? What happened which stops the project going forward? Can we carry on as is? How much worse could it be if we carry on like this? What caused it to happen?

2.   What would this change help prevent from happening if we take action now?

3.   What are the cost implications for us, as the customer, if we agree to this change?

4.   Will the outcome of the project change? What will it look like when it’s done? Will it be the same or different? If different, in what way will it be different and how will this affect what we were originally planning to achieve?

5.   How this will impact the timeline we agreed? How many days/weeks/months will the milestones be shifted by?

6.   What is the solution? What are you planning to do to resolve it? Why did you choose this solution considering the priorities we have as a customer?

7.   What guarantees do we have this solution will work by the new timeline you're giving us? How did you calculate this new timeline? What safeguards have you put in place that would increase the chances of the new timeline being realistic?

8.   Who will do what, when, to move this forward?

9.   What will you do to prevent it from happening again?

10. What are you going to do to make up for this inconvenience?