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How to Communicate “Stop!”
Your software development processes are over and you have delivered your project to your client. Get ready, as the client uses the software, there will be new requests or problems.

Believe it or not: Clients are not always right, even for their own benefit.


You might be told that the client is always right and that is true to some content. But be careful, especially if the user quantity is high in a single client, their success depends on maintaining project scope. If you take every request, you may find that by the end of the warranty period you almost developed a new software. Before that happens, you need to hit the brakes on client requests so that you can maximize stakeholder benefit.


Maintaining the Scope


In order to maintain scope, it is necessary to understand some concepts well. The first thing you should ask yourself when you receive a new request is whether this request is in scope or not. In order to answer this question, you need to know the answers to these 3 questions:

  • what was done

  • when it was done

  • why it was done 


Yes, you are right, even if you have not managed all these processes, you need to master the whole project :)


If you are the person running the whole project, you will probably know a lot of the details. Nevertheless, it is always better to have a record of all incoming requests, evaluations, and results than to rely on your memory. Particularly for comprehensive projects that take a long time, systematic recording is crucial for maintaining scope and therefore client success.


Classification of the Requests


When you receive a new request from a client, the first thing you need to do is to categorize the request.


Bug is something that prevents you from moving forward in the software, that prevents you from moving to the next stage. For example, you are going to start the car and go to the movies, but the engine won't fire. That's a bug and it needs to be resolved in the short term so you can make it to the movie theater. 


Improvement is the category where there is nothing in the software that hinders the process, but the user function or experience will be improved if the request is realized. An example of this is; because the driver's seat is out of adjustment, you can't put it back exactly as you want, yes, you can drive the car, but you can't have a comfortable ride. This is not an obstacle for you to go to the movies, but since you use the car frequently, this situation needs to be resolved in the medium term.


Development is a new function or use case that integrates with the existing solution or works independently. For example, if you have a radio in your car but you want to have a radio with a touch screen, this is a development request.


As you can see, differentiating bugs from others is quite easy. but to separate improvement and development requests, the details of the project such as objectives, scope, expectations, and function definitions will need to be internalized.


How to Communicate the Agenda with the Client


  • Always keep your client requests document up to date. 

  • Keep in touch with the client and users. We know that the first thing you will look at will be the bug requests, but you need to leave it to the client to decide which one. Learn the client’s priorities and plan your agenda accordingly. 

  • Give frequent feedback to the client. Keep accessible the information about which request you are working on, how long the request will take, and what the next request will be when this request is completed. 

  • Communicate the cost of changing priorities. The priorities the client sets may change the agenda, but they should understand which requests are getting in the way and the consequences. 

  • Plan meetings. You are already communicating with your client frequently. To formalize these conversations, you can schedule meetings at regular intervals to discuss what has been done in the past and what you will do in the future.



Terms or too much theoretical knowledge in the project will do nothing but drown the project manager in a pool of information. It is enough to know the basic concepts and to draw your road map accordingly. The best advice I can give you is to know your project so that you do not encounter a completely different project at the end of the maintenance process. Know your client so that you can convey the concepts of in-scope and out-of-scope in a way they would understand. 


The healthier you can communicate, the easier you can protect the scope and client’s interests.
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Hazal Delal Benli
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