A couple of years back, a major disaster took place. We had tied up with an external mobile based organization, larger than us, for providing a customized version of our software which would act as an entry point to their software. Such deals and partnerships happen all the time; the schedule was aggressive, but which schedule is not. Deals such as these are the life blood of a growing organization, since it helps develop partnerships and also builds credibility for other deals (even when the deal may be under an NDA, since you can still use such deals for other partnerships without revealing information that might break the NDA).
So, our marketing team along with their technical team (and a few points from us) managed to seal a deal and there were a lot of congratulations and happy faces. Since the schedule was aggressive, the work started right away. However, within a few days, as the proper design phase started, it became clear that there were problems involved in the probable design. The design changes needed were complex, the number of technical resources that were allocated were far less than the amount required after the design process was evaluated. And with the passage of time, it became clear that the process was only going to go downhill. It was an important collaboration and the organization was willing to add more resources, but the timeline was just not working out. After a series of frantic meetings, it was decided that rather than deliver an inadequate product, it was better to break the deal within time and still be able to maintain a relationship.
Given the importance of the deal and the critical nature of avoiding a situation like that in the future, there was a need to do a thorough analysis of where the problems lay. The analysis took some time, but it soon became clear that the level of interaction with the team that actually owned the product was very low and there was not enough time spent to figure out whether the solution was indeed feasible in the timeframe and with the amount of resources that could be committed. Now, this kind of problem had never been this severe in the past, but now that it had happened once, it became clear that it could occur again in the future. So, the relationship process had to be modified to include more time for a technical evaluation; if the contract was very large, then even a prototype may need to be built before such a contract can be signed off.
So, our marketing team along with their technical team (and a few points from us) managed to seal a deal and there were a lot of congratulations and happy faces. Since the schedule was aggressive, the work started right away. However, within a few days, as the proper design phase started, it became clear that there were problems involved in the probable design. The design changes needed were complex, the number of technical resources that were allocated were far less than the amount required after the design process was evaluated. And with the passage of time, it became clear that the process was only going to go downhill. It was an important collaboration and the organization was willing to add more resources, but the timeline was just not working out. After a series of frantic meetings, it was decided that rather than deliver an inadequate product, it was better to break the deal within time and still be able to maintain a relationship.
Given the importance of the deal and the critical nature of avoiding a situation like that in the future, there was a need to do a thorough analysis of where the problems lay. The analysis took some time, but it soon became clear that the level of interaction with the team that actually owned the product was very low and there was not enough time spent to figure out whether the solution was indeed feasible in the timeframe and with the amount of resources that could be committed. Now, this kind of problem had never been this severe in the past, but now that it had happened once, it became clear that it could occur again in the future. So, the relationship process had to be modified to include more time for a technical evaluation; if the contract was very large, then even a prototype may need to be built before such a contract can be signed off.
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