Are you looking to work with a product development team? It can be scary bringing your project to a new team, but rest assured that we’re here to help. We often get asked by conscientious business owners, how can I be a better client? Here are five things we’ve learned that make working together easy breezy.

Let us know if something isn’t going well

First and foremost, if something about the way we do things isn’t working for you, please tell us. We’d rather be able to quickly address the problem than have our communication or development schedule suffer. Lurking issues find their way out eventually, so we’d rather tackle it as soon as it comes up!

Let us know if things are going well

Do you like getting weekly budget updates or how we run meetings? Do two-week sprints feel just right? We want to work in a way where everyone feels good, and hearing what works well for you is great reinforcement.

Let us know your deadlines, especially with a good lead up

If you have a big investor meeting coming up, or you’re running an ad campaign, just give us a heads up. It’ll help us prioritize where we should put some time in to make sure everything runs smoothly.

Understand that between time, scope, and budget, there’s almost always one that will be compromised

If you have an aggressive deadline, it might require multiple engineers and cost more. If budget is an issue, we’ll try to work with you to adjust the scope, making sure your money is making the most impact. If the desired features can’t be adjusted, the time to build will be longer. When we start collaborating, we’ll work together to identify where the compromise should be.

Let us help you problem solve

The best solutions come from collaboration. If you’re trying to solve a problem, we want to be involved in the discussion and planning. Instead of coming to us with a set solution, let’s brainstorm! Explain the root problem and the expected result; then we’ll collaborate and investigate as many solutions as we can, landing on the best one.

TL,DR: We’re in this together

Not only do the best solutions come from collaboration, but we’ve noticed this approach yields better attitudes across the board. It’s an easy morale boost to feel like you’re working on the same side.

It can be uncomfortable to shift to this kind of high-trust environment if it’s new territory, so be patient with yourself. Many of us have worked in environments that operate with an expected level of distrust, and it takes effort to start being vulnerable with each other, especially when delivering scary news. Thankfully, scary news always becomes a bit less scary when you have a team to overcome the fear with.