Today’s adventure in Access involved discovering I’d been working on behavior in an application that although is recognized that it needs fixing, was not what my customer wanted me focusing on.

You fall down the rabbit hole (as I did) when you become singularly focused on finishing something at all costs. I spent over 50 hours on this task, only to finally come back to the customer to clarify some details and hear that it wasn’t the next thing he wanted done.

So I re-tooled and started working on the alternate requirements the customer wanted solved for. In this case, it is painful for me because I won’t be billing for that until it’s complete and it’s been put aside for the moment. But I do have a customer who is always willing to work with me and we have always been able to come to mutually beneficial terms in the end. I will make sure in the future that I have limits of my own set to double check with the customer to make sure we are on the same page before continuing on a long term project.

So the lesson? Know where both my customer’s and my own limits are in terms of work not leading to a completed product that I might have to shelve and not get paid for until it becomes a priority. Is that in terms of time, money, or something else? Developer know thyself! Developer know thy customer!

PS Don’t worry about me, I’m fine. 🙂