Topic #2 PLUL: What Happens When Client Wants Uniqueness In Edtech Mobile App Development

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Somewhere in between request for proposal and project completion, the life of the project remains untold.

And you won’t belive that what did happen in one of our project of edtech mobile app development.

Yes! All that is seen is a fully-functional application that entertains, educates or facilitates its targeted audiences by hiding all the occurrences of the issues and conflicts by spelling our technical magic, what say developers?

But what happens when client-vendor cannot come to a common ground in between the development phase?

We are here with one such insider incident that will give you a peek behind the scenes into the sufferings of a project.

Education system

So here’s what exactly happened – One of our clients requested for a project resembling an EduTech platforms wherein the students, educators, professionals and parents could interact with each other using question-answer modules. You can imagine it as Quora but with different functionalities for different stakeholders.

It was really an interesting project to work on and we already had a hand at making successful project in the educational domain. As you would guess, we accepted the project in TRooTech’s renowned style i.e. after diving deep into understanding the overall technical, functional, backend, frontend, and customer-centric aspects of the application.

Here, we were justifying our endeavors by giving life to the project and it was in the development phase as we had estimated it to be.

But when everything goes right, something is wrong; because we love challenges.

Our client realized that all the platforms that his forum would be competing with, has got three supportive content forms along with the text for the Ask Question module – video, image, text document. At this point, our client wanted to add a feature that allows unlimited uploading of the content types with no uploading size limit considering it as a minor addition in the application.

We duly respect the fact that not being technically sound, our client trusted our knowledge and expertise to handle challenges but failed to perceive the fact that technology comes with some limitations.

Even the best messaging app – Whatsapp allows only 10 content and media to be shared at a time, because the developers behind the project understand the capacity of the server. Thus, the project demanded a server change for unlimited media sharing, which any technical person would know is unfeasible at the time.

Once half of the project was completed, because of that extra feature the entire flow of the project was to be re-evaluated, validated and compiled codes were to be altered and written again as per the requirement of the functionality. Thus, extending the estimated time which reflected it effect on cost and resources as well.

Consequently, a minor change in the application brought about a major development change.

You probably thought when did that happen

 

There comes a time in many of the scenarios during the development of the project when the client wants enhanced features with the spirit to hand-over something unique to its audience.

Same thing happened in our project, our client demanded the additional features without considering the technical aspects that needed to be changed and the time constraint for edtech mobile app development

Also, for adding this additional functionality of Ask Question, there occurred circumstances of difference in perceiving sense both for us and the client, since every this additional feature though minor at the frontend needed huge technological reforms and practically at that time it wasn’t possible in the decided time frame.

At that time what should client do

 

Client Role

The client comes into play for the occurrence of a pause-like situation due to conveying partial requirements during the RFP.

When the client approached us with the requirement, it was important to reassure that his interpretation of the functionality is the same as that of the vendor.

Another side of his role demands having end-to-end knowledge about

the futuristic changes he might choose to adopt in development phase and informing the same to the vendors.

And what we did

 

In order to complete the project at the pre-determined time, we provide dedicated resources to the project to restrict further wastage of time.

This led us to stop other projects and additional costs incurred since an entire team only worked for that project.

Vendor Role

Where did it affect us

 

Being choosy about who we hire, we don’t believe in having a fleet to claim us a big company.

So, we have only limited yet highly-talented resources, but after allocating the team for this particular project, we couldn’t take another project as all our resources were occupied in this project’s alterations.

Because of unexpected changes from the client’s side in the middle of the development phase, the resources were used for more time than required.

What did happen with time and cost

 

When we started with the project, we had the end-product in mind with all the functionality. Then came an unexpected change due to which the entire flow of the project was changed.

Trust me, we were almost again starting from the scratch for the project flow. Thus, we designed the strategies twice and had to rework on altering the project flow as per the new feature added.

This led to put double of the time and resources for the same aspect.

With a newly added functionality, even the client was not spared with the effect of this prolonged time. He had to delay the launch of the project and ultimately suffer due to the stretched time.

And when time of the project got stretched it directly showed its effect on the cost incurred when we were at the paying side. We strongly believe in business ethics and we didn’t charge any extra cost for the used resources and extra time.

And finally we overcame the issues

 

The best solution to get out of such a project maze is to have an effective communication.

When this type of issue occurred with us, we explained all the possibilities of getting out of the confusion to our client.

One such solution was – Add this ‘Ask Question’ module functionality of uploading content forms multiple times in the subsequent phase of the project.

This way the client could launch his project on time and we could maintain our ritual of delivering the best that we can in the said time bracket.

What did you learn?

The client and vendor should consider some buffer time, so that if time exceeds, the estimation never gets disturbed.

Also, the client should be well versed with all the aspects about models used for the development beforehand and the vendor should never back when it comes to assisting the client towards the solution.

More About Author

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Vishal Nakum

Vishal Nakum is a tech enthusiast with a passion for exploring the latest developments in the world of technology. He has a keen interest in emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Blockchain, and enjoys keeping up-to-date with the latest trends and advancements in these fields. Vishal is an avid learner and is always on the lookout for new ways to expand his knowledge and skills. He is also a creative thinker and enjoys experimenting with new ideas and concepts. In his free time, Vishal enjoys playing video games and reading books on technology and science.