When a client asks for Proof Of Concept and expects finished product

Question

We have a client with whom we have a relationship of delivering proofs of concepts only. But when it comes the time to demo they expect an early version of what would be the solution. They want databases populated with real data, look-and-feel of a finished product and other things (including features) which are trivial and no way contribute towards proving the concept.

What do you do with that? How do you handle such a situation? (I'm the developer as well as the person who will be talking to the client along with other non-developers.)

Answer 1

Ben's answer in comments:

sounds like you need a more watertight contract / service level agreement then so you can tell them straight out that they haven't paid for real data in the database or the coding of additional features.

Answer 2

I believe your service level agreement should consist what your client should be expecting at the POC Level, if it is not clearly stated in there, then client may be right to ask for a look and feel finished of your product especially when the concept is well convincing and working.

Answer 3

Who should be managing expectations here? Chances are someone should be telling the client, "You agreed to only this, so that is what you are getting," and ensuring this is acceptable. Would you expect a gourmet hamburger from McDonald's? I know I wouldn't and this is because of what brand McDonald's has spent years promoting and building. What is your company's image when it comes to this stuff and what kind of precedent has been set? If the client has done this numerous times then it may be quite painful and difficult to change now.

If I didn't see someone step in to manage expectations I would take that as a major red flag and find somewhere else to work.

Answer 4

I would use the analogy that you are delivering something similar to an architect creating a scale model of a building.

Answer 5

When you say:

We have a client with whom we have a relationship of delivering proofs of concepts only.

How do you define that relationship? Do you have a contract with this client? Who established this relationship on your companies side of things?

Ideally, outside of this contract you also have documentation of your meetings with the client, their requirements documents, and a list of deliverables that your company promised to provide to the client before really getting down to work. Anything they are expecting to be in the PoC that wasn't discussed in these meetings and documents should be off limits and you should be able to point to those documents and remind the client of that fact.

Remember, you're an engineer. You want to solve problems and you want to be helpful. Resist that impulse and go back to your contract, go back to your planning docs, and tell them that extra polish or feature was not in scope for the agreed upon contract work. Tell them as politely as you can and if they push back I would simply offer to put them in contact with your boss so they can bring this up with him.

Answer 6

As said before this should be explained as part of your initial meetings that the PoC is just that, a PoC and not the finished article.

Answer 7

There only one thing that matters.

Have they paid a % deposit already or commited to paying something for this proof of concept? Otherwise you might as well be a free requirement analyst

Answer 8

It sounds like your client is trying to squeeze you and/or whoever will do the real implementation. The more your prototype looks and works like a finished product, the less perceived value there is in what the developer implements. The client can say: "The design and UI are already done -- all you need to do is to hook it up to a production server." At the same time, they'll tell you: "This looks nice, but it's only a prototype, isn't it? We can't actually use this."

Answer 9

I always try to make my prototypes to have a strong "prototype look" to avoid confussion to the extent possible. Recently I have started to use Expression Blend with Sketchflow, it is a great tool because it produces a UI that looks like this:

If your client still thinks that this is the final product... well, tell him "yes, it is", take the money and run! :-)