Book Image

Skill Up: A Software Developer's Guide to Life and Career

By : Jordan Hudgens
3 (1)
Book Image

Skill Up: A Software Developer's Guide to Life and Career

3 (1)
By: Jordan Hudgens

Overview of this book

This is an all-purpose toolkit for your programming career. It has been built by Jordan Hudgens over a lifetime of coding and teaching coding. It helps you identify the key questions and stumbling blocks that programmers encounter, and gives you the answers to them! It is a comprehensive guide containing more than 50 insights that you can use to improve your work, and to give advice in your career. The book is split up into three topic areas: Coder Skills, Freelancer Skills, and Career Skills, each containing a wealth of practical advice. Coder Skills contains advice for people starting out, or those who are already working in a programming role but want to improve their skills. It includes such subjects as: how to study and understand complex topics, and getting past skill plateaus when learning new languages. Freelancer Skills contains advice for developers working as freelancers or with freelancers. It includes such subjects as: knowing when to fire a client, and tips for taking over legacy applications. Career Skills contains advice for building a successful career as a developer. It includes such subjects as: how to improve your programming techniques, and interview guides and developer salary negotiation strategies.
Table of Contents (5 chapters)
4
Index

Chapter 37. Managing Client Conflicts as a Freelancer

In this chapter, I'm going to discuss managing client conflicts. It's simply a matter of life and business that you will run into conflicts with clients. Some of the most common confrontations seem to be:

  • Going over the time you originally estimated
  • Going over the budget for the project
  • Not delivering a feature that matched the client's expectations
  • A bug occurring in an application

None of these are fun to work through, and most of them can be avoided if the proper care is taken at each stage of the project management process. However, I want to discuss what happens when conflicts occur and how to best manage them.

Strategies for managing client conflicts

First and foremost, do not let emotions take over. This is probably one of the hardest ones for me because I love what I do and when bad things happen in a project my first response is to get defensive, which is one of the worst responses to have. So, when I see an...