Rainy Sundays

Developers typically have a couple of things in common with vampires: they shun the daylight, and don't interact well with stakeholders.

I'd like to think I'm an exception. I do like the dark, but I'm pretty good at communicating, especially with a bit of prep time and a pen and paper to hand.

As a former freelancer working for small businesses, I frequently had to present issues in laymans' terms, schedule parallel projects, multitask and present achievable, accurate delivery estimates. I have a few golden rules:

• Underpromise and overdeliver, whenever you can. Stakeholders should be happy at delivery, not at planning meetings.
• When something goes wrong, and you know delays are inevitable, tell the stakeholder fast and frankly - along with a plan of how to fix it and a good estimate of how long it'll take. Businesses need to be able to build plans on schedules and curve balls need forewarning, ASAP.
• DO NOT let delays roll. Pad your expectation for a solution, because while a stakeholder will often let it slide the second time... they're losing confidence in you, fast.

I've been using Stakeholder Interaction since Apr 2010 (15 years).