This TagCloud experiment is brought to you by the Department of Things That Deborah Doesn’t Understand. I’m hoping that “learning by doing” will be the order of the day…

And thanks, Jon–that’s helpful. Although definitely not user-friendly on WP’s part. It’s invisible on the homepage, and when you click the “Comments” link, the paragraph with the metadata is actually above the top of the screen.

Enough griping–great thread.

Clients who return scope and contract documents without clearly indicating changes (i.e. using Word’s track changes) for significant changes. This happened to me today.
Clients who don’t have time to do adequate scoping, but are “on a really tight timeline” for development.
Clients who schedule technology projects (website redesigns, database upgrades, etc) during their busiest program season.
Clients who insist on line items in a bid, then try to remove the line items that they don’t think are important (like training, documentation, etc).
Clients who start conversations with “We don’t want to nickel and dime you on this, but…”
Clients who insist that audience research isn’t important because they “already know what our audience needs are.”
Clients who want to save money on a project by having staff do work that they aren’t trained for (as in “our development director does some graphic design…”).
Clients who want search engine optimization work, but aren’t interested in developing better content.
Clients who don’t understand that custom software development is risky and problematic, and aren’t willing to consider existing COTS or opensource software that does 85% of what they need.
Clients who have already made decisions about technology without a proper needs assessment. As in, “We want to do this in ASP. Or Filemaker. Or LISP.” (Okay, so I’ve never had anyone ask me do to anything in LISP. But you get the point.)
Clients who use bootleg software. (Apart from other issues, it indicates a lack of commitment to having the resources to get the job done.)
Clients who want technical change but aren’t prepared to make the necessary staffing or business changes to support that technical change (e.g. deploying a blog, but not carving out staff time to create new content.)
Project managers who don’t communicate well with other staff.
Clients who are averse to a “start simple, iterate often” approach and instead want a massive project in a single development cycle.

That’s enough for now, I guess. At one time or another, I’ve had each of these happen to me.

I’d also second the mentions that leadership needs to be bought in on technical change (in no small part because business practices are so tightly linked to technology), project managers need to be empowered to make decisions (and be willing to make those decisions), and staff need to have a good understanding of the amount of time that tech projects will take. So many clients seem to walk into a project thinking that if they just get the ball rolling, the consultant will do all the work.

Incidentally, the Software Project Survival Guide by Stephen McConnell is one of the better books I’ve read lately about managing custom software development projects.

Not great usability on the part of WordPress, I admit.

Edumacate me: I see a list of “Recent Trackbacks” in your sidebar, but I don’t see TrackBack URLs associated with your posts. How can I TrackBack here if I quote you?

“We already know what we need. We need a Web site!” (sigh)

Clients makes some statement that indicates they do not like technology or learning new technology.

Your project contact is not empowered to be the decision maker on the project.