Clients are fibbers.

Hmm. Sorry. Scratch that.

Clients do not understand what they are agreeing to and inadvertently fib to development teams.

Yes. That's better.

To avoid more miscommunication, I will provide further clarification of terms in brackets. After all, this whole article is about the failure of communicating expectations between two parties.

At the start of any project, it is established who on the client's team will be the main contact (read: the one person who is responsible for getting information, documents, files and answers to the development team as needed to meet projected timelines).

This person's availability is vital (read: muy importante) to achieving deliverables by the final release date (read: launching your website on time).

Often, it's the person who will take over as webmaster who gets appointed as the main client contact. This is fine, as long as the webmaster has the authority to make decisions.

The Availability Conversation

In these scripts, DT=Development Team, and CC=Client Contact

Conversation 1: an example of how the conversation usually goes

These are not necessarily in order of severity as certain risks can be more damaging to certain projects. It isn't an exhausted list either (just our personal favourites). For each one, I've provided an explanation (and in some cases, an anecdotal admonition).