Verba Volant, Scripta Manent - DailyBlogTips |
| Posted: 01 Nov 2012 01:22 PM PDT
“Verba volant, scripta manent” is a Latin proverb that means “spoken words fly away, written words remain” (hey, if nothing else you learned this reading the post…). I find this proverb to be one of the most valuable ones in business situations. As you might remember I am working pretty much full time now with software and mobile applications development. A couple of weeks ago we landed a project with an organization. The project involves developing a logbook app where the employees and associates of the organization will input data, and that data will first be saved into a local database and later synchronized with a central server. When we had a meeting to discuss the project details it didn’t seem that complex, so we gave the client a fast turnaround time (30 days) and charged a moderate price. Everyone was happy, and we started the development. Ten days or so into the project the client started calling us and requesting new features. We said those extra features were not requested during the initial discussion of the project. The client said they were. As you can see, spoken words fly away, and they did in the case. Obviously we had a contract for the project, but we weren’t careful enough to outline all the features of the application and other small details. We managed to accommodate both sides eventually, but it took many hours of negotiation and some extra work from our side. If instead of handling the whole thing verbally we had a project description written down with all the features and expected deliverables this problem wouldn’t arise in the first place. And this principle applies to pretty much every endeavor you can image. Buying things, selling things, hiring people, getting hired, lending money, borrowing money, you name it. Writing every single detail down on paper will take 30 extra minutes of your time upfront, but it might save you hours and big headaches in the future. Verba Volant, Scripta Manent.
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