Working with developers can be a little like a husband/wife discussion about painting the kitchen that turns into a full-blown home renovation. It can easily turn into something much more time-intensive or complex without drawing a line and prioritizing what matters most.
We’ve worked with a lot of developers and seen clients work with a lot of developers. Here’s how to help developers stay laser-focused, keep your sanity, and still have something usable at the end of the sprint.
Don’t say: “Can you make it smarter?”
Do say: “I want the screen to let users submit their info in two steps—no more, no less.”
Developers aren’t mind readers, and they will fill in the gaps. Those gaps often become portals to a whole world of features. Keep the direction concrete. They want to help, but without clear boundaries, your “simple update” turns into a SaaS platform with machine learning and sentiment tracking.
When they inevitably ask 37 questions about corner cases you’ve never considered, don’t panic. Just say, “Let’s solve for the 80% case and worry about the aliens invading later.”
Before a single line of code is written, define what “done” looks like. And no, “when it’s cool” is not a valid definition.
Create a checklist for the developer:
No email alerts, reporting dashboards, or hover animations. At least not yet.
When the dev comes back with, “I added a notification system just in case,” smile and say, “Love the initiative. Let’s add that to our parking lot of dreams and come back to it after this launch.”
Spoiler: developers secretly like being told what not to do. It frees them to focus on what’s most important and helps them avoid building features no one will use (or worse, test).
Developers have ideas. Lots of them. And honestly, many are pretty good. But good ideas aren’t always good right now. Create a parking lot: a literal list titled “Cool Stuff We Might Actually Want Someday.” When a dev pitches something shiny, you can say, “Let’s put that in the parking lot. If our launch doesn’t implode, we’ll revisit.” This way, you acknowledge their creativity without derailing the mission.
If you say, “Just get me something basic,” without a time limit, you might get a hand-carved ivory throne with voice commands. Developers won’t know where the bottom is unless you show them. Set a boundary, like, “Give me something functional in six hours. I don’t care if it’s ugly.” This turns off perfectionism and turns on the get-it-done mentality. Developers respect speed as much as they respect elegance. If you let them test in the wild before polishing, they might actually thank you.
If a dev suggests adding multi-user permissions and a real-time sync feature “while we’re in here,” pause. Smile politely and say no. Then redirect the energy: “We’ll never launch if we keep adding stuff. Let’s ship what we have and enhance after users complain.”
There will always be things to add or supposed small tweaks developers could make. Just stick to the scope and reassess later to avoid a pileup of ideas.
Every developer forum says the same thing: “Expect stakeholders to keep changing their minds.” Let your business be the unicorn who doesn’t.
Developers will meet your expectations if you give them train tracks to run on. Give them a runway, and they might try to build a rocket to Mars. Provide a clear destination, a reasonable timeline, and a to-do list that doesn’t include “surprise me.” There will be a much better chance the team delivers what you asked for, and maybe even on time.
At Trenegy, we work with our clients on project management and change management activities to keep development projects on task and within budget. To chat more, email us at info@trenegy.com.
Trenegy is a non-traditional consulting firm based in Houston, Texas.