Last week I was hit by the customer-programmer strange relationship.

Two days before ending the coding session we eventually find out that one of our modules is far-away from the customer expectations.

That's of-course not the first time, but again? I was quite sure that this time we did every thing by the book, probably wrong.

After I took a day or two for thinking I want to share my thoughts:

1) Customer: completely not what I meant, I said that…, we need…

The worst case, nightmare of every Developer/Manger and even Customer, when the customer for the first time(last session of coding or even at the acceptance tests) understand that what he said and the things that were understood (written by the team and signed by him) are completely different.

2) Customer: That's good…, yes…, OK… I just want to change the screen instead of all Textboxes to AutoCompleteBox.

That was not written as one of the requirements – of course, why we didn't think about this…

I am not gonna answer those questions (I'll provide my point of view in the future)

Also there are a lot of books and other stuff for this.

We can minimize the appearance of the Second and we can almost prevent the First, but shit happens.

I'll tell you what really annoying me:

- Finally, we got to the prioritize stage for those new add-ins, and right now the customer start showing you his skills/knowledge in development, what's the problem? I saw that in Hattrick also at Google map so why you wrote 1-week? And that's go on for each feature.

From my point of view I've got some advices:

- Don’t spend your time on argue (who was wrong and why), book another meeting for special investigation/conclusion.

- Extending the first sentence, don't miss your main goal! which is to find out what should be done for the next time!

- Understand the Huge Gap between you and your customer. (different terms, expressions)

This will help you both to prevent such incidents.

- Work together but don’t afraid to say what you think, in those special meetings talk about the problems from your point of view but always think about new solutions(for those Gaps).

My last advice:

Enjoy your work, this will help you overcome such b(/s)ad days.