I’ve been selling custom FileMaker solutions for IT Solutions since I started with the company eight years ago. During that time, I’ve attended hundreds of meetings with prospects and clients doing my best to explain why we do it better than the competition. Prior to us rolling out our FMAgile initiative a little over a year ago, something never felt quite right whenever I got to the part about our “method” for managing projects.
For the majority of my experience, we had offered our version of Waterfall and pitched it with some catchy alliteration for easy identification of the steps: Discovery, Design, Development, and Deployment. While it sounded very official and organized, and we put a lot of effort into making it work for our team, pitching it always felt a little forced for me. And, as anyone who’s ever tried to sell anything knows, if you don’t truly believe in the value of what you’re selling, you’re going to have a tougher time convincing others why they should buy it. Fortunately, we managed to sell a lot of people on the 4 Ds Approach, otherwise I probably wouldn’t still be here. 
And I believe this approach probably works well and has value for a lot of organizations. But for IT Solutions, particularly with rapid application development (the great majority of it FileMaker-based), it was always like a square peg in a round hole.
I won’t go into details about why the 4 Ds too often led to another “D” — disillusionment (see Jason’s FMAgile white paper for that) — but in a nutshell we were going against the grain of two critical things: our company culture and FileMaker’s core strength as a flexible, easily adaptable programming platform. As a full-service consulting firm, IT Solutions has had great success hiring personable network engineers and developers who enjoy working one-on-one with clients to solve their technology challenges. But when we made the decision to organize our development team and processes a couple of years into my tenure, we took away the one-on-one approach in looking to gain more internal control. And in doing so, we lost that personal touch. That, combined with managing FileMaker projects with very rigid steps and little room for change, is what led us down the road of project stress instead of project success.
But our “discovery” of Agile methodologies changed our outlook dramatically. It was like someone opened a window in a dark, dank room and a gust of fresh air blew in. We knew almost immediately that we had found a method that fit not only FileMaker development, but also our culture and what we were trying to achieve as a company. The only question was what were clients and prospects going to think of it? Fortunately, a little over a year into it, I’m happy to report I’ve yet to hear one of them object to it. In fact, what I hear more often than not when I’m finished giving the FMAgile pitch (enthusiastically, of course) is, “that makes a lot of sense,” or, “that sounds like the right way to go about it.” And this is from people who, for the most part, have no prior custom development exposure. Before, when I was pitching the 4 Ds, I usually never got any feedback at all. I think the rigid nature of the process and the client’s perceived lack of involvement were the chief reasons for the lack of any feedback – positive or negative. The old process must have sounded very much like an assembly line to them – like we were making all databases exactly alike – so what difference did it make to them? But with FMAgile, they’re hearing right away that we welcome their systems’ uniqueness and nuances. And, more importantly, that they have a stake in the outcome of the project
Of course positive feedback doesn’t pay the bills. But new clients and projects do. Since rolling out FMAgile 14 months ago, we have worked on about 10 Agile projects, including two of the three largest in the history of the company. To handle the new work, we’ve brought on three new FileMaker developers and have a fourth starting next month. And, best of all, the pipeline of work continues to expand. I strongly believe that FMAgile is a large part of why clients are choosing us over other consultants or internal resources. Ultimately, what matters most is succeeding with the projects once they come in the door, because that’s what makes happy repeat customers and motivated developers. But, when all else (cost, resources, marketing materials) looks about the same from one consultant to the next, the FMAgile process, and its emphasis on collaboration and acceptance of change, gives us an additional edge that helps close the deal.
Contact Jim Higgins, IT Solutions, for more information about this post.
