Choosing Clients Matters More Than Choosing Projects

For our first few years we rarely turned down work: if the budget covered our costs, we took the project. Only by year five did we understand that what decides a project is rarely the difficulty of the requirements, but the people across the table.

Three questions we ask

Can they describe the problem they have, rather than hand over a feature list? People who can articulate the problem usually want to solve it with you.

Is the decision chain clear? If the person signing the contract is not the person using the system, the requirements will drift.

Do they respect professional judgement? Clients who ignore every recommendation tend to dislike the outcome as well.

What we have walked away from

Last year we declined a well-funded project: a full management system in two months, with no phased launch. We read it as a problem of understanding, not of schedule.

We spent that time upgrading an existing client's system instead. A year later the other company came back and asked us to build the first phase.

More clients is not the goal. The relationships that last usually start with harder conversations and get easier over time.