"Sparkling Daggers" or how we did an Arab project

    ** attention, this article breaks off as suddenly as the project described in it **

    Start


    It all started more than optimistically: customers from the UAE (a new market for us), presentable appearance of representatives, promises of other contracts, “ money is not a problem ”. All this in total played a cruel joke with us and, to our misfortune, we signed up for this development. I wanted to try it. As a result, this resulted in the termination of the contract unilaterally, but not from the client, but by us - the outsourcing company.

    The project itself was simple - it was an auction for the sale of license plates ($ 80,000- $ 90,000 apiece), camels and other attributes of everyday life in the United Arab Emirates. It was necessary to create an iOS app, looking back at an existing (but not yet working) web version. At the stage of the first after-sales communication I conducted the client, and already then the first alarm began to appear, because the client provided very little information about the project. After that, management was transferred to our project manager. Looking ahead, I’ll say that as a result, he not only didn’t leave for the yellow house, but didn’t even completely turn gray, for which he has great respect.

    So, the first featureThe above mentioned is very little information, and as it turned out, this is not a feature of an individual client, but a feature of all regional companies that place orders directly, and not through Western partners. The fact is that the culture of management and management in the Arab world is very different from the western one and ours too. It is very variable and the same conditions can lead to different results. An example is “ oral agreements”": In London (and the project, by the way, was sold through our London office), an oral agreement is a legally recognized form for concluding a transaction and refers to it accordingly, however, they prefer to draw up contracts on paper. In the Arab world, things are a little more complicated - contracts are neglected, but just the oral form of contractual relations dominates. Because of this, a lot of things are never described on paper if the project does not go beyond the region, because it is believed that everything can be agreed in person. In our case, it was just that, the project was almost completely for the local market and its only international “feature” was the opportunity to choose the English interface language. Due to the lack of at least some valuable information in the first stage, the stage of project analysis was very important. Who would have thought,

    Requirements collection


    The first thing that we noticed was a very aggressive communication style from the very first day when the project entered the development office. Before that, we thought that ex-Soviet customers were the most aggressive, but not. This aggression manifested itself even when we tried to clarify absolutely harmless things, such as when the API demo will be. This can be called a second feature.- if you are paid money, then for the Arab customer you are just an employee, but not a partner. In our case, the situation was aggravated by the fact that the founders of the customer company were quite young people. I suggest that you introduce yourself a mixture of oriental temperament, young age and big money. As a result, a solution was found to ask them the minimum number of questions and to offer the maximum themselves. This did not always work, because with more than three hours of silence, letters-pings immediately began to pour in, but life became a little easier.

    The customer requested a prototype. OK, this is our job. The prototype was made in Axure and turned out to be very detailed, given the amount of information that was on hand. Through constant letters of indignation - “ why take so long"- the prototype was completed. The project manager learned Zen and all the nuances of acquiring license plates in Abu Dhabi. The client began to make changes to the arrangement of elements and other trifles - this is normal, the workflow. With grief in half, we passed this stage, having lost along the way “only” a week in communication with the client. In parallel, a technical specification was being written, which was very difficult due to the complete lack of assistance. The pressure of claims against us was intensified due to the fact that we were delaying the deadlines already in the first stages, and of course, no one wanted to hear about the reasons for the delay (read above). Here we are faced with another featurethird. Under the terms of the contract, we signed up for certain deadlines for the work, at the same time, there was a clause in the contract that the customer agrees to provide us with the data necessary for development. And here they were able to cling to the fact that the contact did not indicate what they should provide us with. It turned out that in their opinion, we do not need an API in principle. It turned out further that no one was going to provide the API, simply because it was not there, and when it would be there, no one could say, however, this did not prevent customers from constantly reminding about our deadlines and deadlines in general. Those. any documents and agreements are perverted in favor of the customer and this was on each of my 4 Arab projects.

    Feature Four- no claims to the customer are accepted, period. Attempts to explain that the deadlines are being delayed, as the client does not answer questions or does not provide enough information in his answers, as well as due to the lack of API documentation or a live demo, all this was ignored, and if he received an answer, it was in the spirit of “ do the project, it’s not worth us to learn, you have a contract - you are obliged to give us a beta-build by such a date, follow "- this is a quote from one of the telephone conversations. And this, I note, even before the interface was agreed. How can we communicate and lead a joint project, even if we are just a performer, it did not fit my head. The project was already turning into flour, and our first thoughts began to appear that it won’t end well.

    Design


    When the design phase began, the client asked the app to look like an auction website in order to maintain continuity. I did not want to argue about the design of their site, so it was decided to squeeze out of what is maximum. We prepared the “two and a half” design options, the customer chose one, another 2 weeks went through alterations and refinements, to the extent that we were told which element to move to and which background photo to use. Okay, it’s seemingly finished, the design is accepted. At this moment, the project statistics showed that it would definitely not be profitable for the company, because the time spent was already 50% of the estimated. It was taken as given that the margin for the project would be minimal, if at all.

    image

    Nevertheless, the design is accepted, a reason to rejoice, but there it was. A flurry of calls and letters began about the fact that literally tomorrow there should already be a beta build under the original contract, and you just sent us the final design today. Nobody wanted to hear that the deadlines of the milestones were postponed in proportion to the downtime due to the fault of the customer , of course. And then the unexpected happened - we came to our London office. I wrote the word “Come” with a capital letter, because according to the stories of employees it was a real sight. Representatives of our customers came to the business meeting in a very aggressive mood and with daggers, which they did not fail to shine and threatened to use. The director of the office had to intervene in the matter, who indicated these people first a contract and then a door.The fifth feature - often Arab customers try to transfer the conflict as close to you (physically) as possible. This story, of course, made a double impression on our English office: on the one hand, a free performance, and on the other, it was somehow unhappy at all.

    Finish


    The pressure intensified, and we decided not to start development until the API was ready. What kind of reaction this caused at the customer, you can imagine. Threats began with the court, pressure on the English office and the project manager increased as much as possible. After conferring, we decided to terminate the contract unilaterally, as the conditions created by the client are beyond our reach. All materials: prototype, design, specification for 30+ pages were sent to the client along with a formal notice of contract termination. Of course there were further threats, calls, letters, but that was already completely unimportant. They never went to court, because they had no chance to win.

    So for us one of the Arab projects ended - even before reaching the stage of development, in fact. I don’t know which company eventually completed the project, but judging by what is available in the App Store (the link has been deleted), the design was taken by us, the logic corresponds to our prototype.

    It was a very difficult but extremely rewarding experience. It was worth getting not only for the sake of stress resistance training, but also to assess the degree of your protection. After that, we revised our approach to concluding contracts, describing mutual obligations within their framework and calculating risks when working with clients from this region. It is also worth mentioning that Arab customers having their offices in Europe and working through them are a completely different approach due to the fact that the original client and the contractor have the same interpreter - the European office, which is necessary as air for successful project management with representatives this region.

    Over the course of my career I have had 4 Arab projects: 2 mobile, one telecom and one web. One of them managed to be completed. Of course, it is impossible to judge the whole region in general either by this article or by 4 projects, however, experience is still negative. Perhaps working locally in Abu Dhabi or Dubai, the situation is completely different. Hence the request. Tell us in the comments about your experience working with customers from Arab countries.

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