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This Week's Feature ↓

A Major Project That Went Wrong

and lost $65,000...

Discovery calls.

We've all been there.

Sharing aspirations.

Needs.

Wants.

And then the work begins..

...until things go wrong.

Please note: I'm not sharing the names of the systems and companies I used during this project for professionalism and privacy.

The Backstory

In June 2023, I spearheaded a new CRM system project for my team to provide more organization and automation for our 300+ daily leads.

We outgrew our current system and needed something to grow with us.

I vetted 3-4 companies that were recommended.

We settled on one that was responsive and quick to share wireframes and referrals for exactly what we needed.

We Were Prepped For This Project

We provided a lot to start the project...

Workflows
Videos
Screenshots
Recordings
Backend Access

After reviewing them on discovery calls, we felt this was a great match.

😄 I felt very confident in the 3rd-party company.

Starting the work

After 3 weeks of discovery calls, we were introduced to our dev team.

This system would be new for our team, so it was imperative that it would be an easy and simple learning curve.

🤨 Learning a new system was complex, but things were coming together.

Then, the project manager left

The company we hired suddenly had a team shakeup, and the project manager was gone.

Communication started to break down; things began to get a bit chaotic with changes. I started to worry about the progress being made.

I lacked confidence in the system as things were not testing correctly, and seemingly simple things were breaking.

😬 My gut was telling me to run.

After 6 months, we had nothing

The system was a skeleton and past the deadline.

Half of the original integrations were not working.

The ones that were working had faulty test patterns.

We spent over $65,000, which was over our budget.

🫥 I had NOTHING to show for the time, effort, and money.

We asked for our money back

The project was well overdue for its deadline.

The system was flawed.

We had no confidence that we could teach the system to our team.

The company we hired refused to refund any money despite our showing proof of incomplete pieces of the SOW (statement of work) and flawed features they claimed were working.

🤬 Everything went wrong.

I only had myself to blame

This wasn't my first development project.

I've managed projects involving apps, website development, technical SEO, and other larger projects.

I am organized.

I save recorded videos.

I share screenshots.

I test things like crazy.

😔 I felt like I let my team down.

Our Internal Team Gathered

We discussed hiring someone to finish the job, but it would cost more.

We discussed legal options against the company, which would cost legal fees.

Our final discussion landed on the difficult decision to let it go.

😫 This was the worst feeling I've had in my 12+ year career.

5 Lessons I Learned From This...

This was a MAJOR gut punch for me. After a few weeks of absorbing it and living with it, I wanted to refect on some of the things I would have done differently. These were some of the key lessons learned:

Always Log Everything: When working with 3rd party companies on big projects, record your emails, video calls, screenshots, etc.
Trust Your Gut: The gut is a magical thing. It gives you the sense of good, bad, or indifferent. Listen to it. Speak up if it tells you something opposite to what you're doing.
Sometimes, bigger isn't Better: This new system would be more robust, but is that what our team needed? I couldn't tell you. But I can tell you that our current system works well, and our team is very good with it.
Ask for the 3 D's of SOWs: The SOW sometimes get overlooked and glanced over. I've found that a lot of companies keep them general so there is flexibilty, but it shouldn't be that. Ask for Deliverables, Deadlines, and Details.
Share a project earlier with the team: I believe that if I had shared the system and project with my team earlier in the building process, I would have received feedback of opposition that would have triggered me to think earlier in the project.

This was by far the worst lost I've been the lead prject manager on in my 12+ year career, it was not easy to swallow, and I finally feel that I can talk about it.

I hope sharing this low point with you can help in your future projects.