It’s extremely common to hire a custom development company to help build your project. Over the last 7 years, Falafel has worked on and delivered over 380 projects based on the Telerik Sitefinity CMS alone. In that time, I’ve learned a few things that can be beneficial for both the clients and the company. While the vast majority of projects go perfectly well, not all do. Here are a few things you can do both as a customer, and as the consulting group, to save those projects before they take a wrong turn.
Things you hear that should be a red flag from the start:
- Just change your proposal to half that as I know my boss will approve it and then add the rest later when he has no other choice but continue with the project.
- We used 3 other Sitefinity partners but they all failed, we want to try you out now.
- Our Sr. Engineers did an awesome job converting the site to Sitefinity, we just need you to take a look and let us know why are the pages taking 33 seconds each to load.
- I am not technical, but I require to know exactly everything you are doing.
- If the Sitefinity update broke something, why are we being billed for you to fix it, shouldn’t you bill Telerik for that?
- I did not do anything to the page to break it, I just removed all these javascript widgets that were messing up the layout in the designer.
- I am a SQL genius, I added the pages manually to the database but they are not showing up in the backend.
- Ok, I will accept the fact that the project is on Time & Material as long as we can cap it at a max and anything after that you deliver on your own dime.
- We don’t have the requirements ready yet but we still would like to know how much will this project cost.
- I am surprised your Engineer is not an expert on Kentico, I expect a Sitefinity Expert to know ALL the CMS systems out there.
These are minorities, the majority of clients are always a delight to work with and we built tremendous relationships with Fortune 1000 companies all over the world building tremendous Sitefinity projects with great success.
My recommendations to companies that require high quality Sitefinity architecture and Engineering:
- Do your homework, there are over 300 Sitefinity partners out there, not all are created equal
- When you hire an “agency” understand that development is not always their main focus, design and Marketing is.
- If you don’t have requirements yet for your site, then you are not ready for development. The Architecture and Design phase is another billable phase of the project.
- Get all your stakeholders together in one room to decide on the project (Executives, Marketing, Development, Design, others…)
- If your Designer DOES NOT know HTML, you don’t have a Designer, you have an artist.
- If you do not agree with the time line proposed for each item being developed, be prepared to explain your technical point of view and experience in the matter. “It just does not feel right” is not an acceptable answer. The best rememdy here is to hire a trusted company, so you can believe in them when they tell you how long each item will take.
- When you don’t pay your bills on time repeatedly, don’t be surprised when the work stops. Your car stops too when you don’t fill it with gas, I don’t see you yelling at the car.
- Know what you want, the goal, the direction, we will help you get there with elegance. If you can’t share what you are looking for we are not mind readers.
- Don’t try to do things against how Sitefinity likes/wants to work, life is too short.
- Be happy, be respectful and enjoy the project, you will be treated with utmost respect with the highest quality of Engineering possible.
If you’re the company doing the work, learn to read your potential customers. The sad fact is, you won’t be right for every project; just as likely – the customer may not be right for you.
How about others? any Sitefinity nightmares with customers that you care to share? Good experiences are welcome too 
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