I'm just getting my freelance career, and career in general started, and I've been running into this lesson pretty hard.
My natural inclination is to talk about how I'm going to go about something and this helps me when I verbalize it, but it makes communication more difficult, because then I end up confusing the client or non-technical associates on details that I should have never brought up in the first place.
Best case scenario is they understand that I'm telling them something they could care less about, but the worst case scenario is that they walk away with incorrect assumptions.
Shouldn't you be finding a way to give them “x product by a certain date”? Managing how that happens is your job as the freelancer. If you decide to employ and Agile strategy to plan out your own work that's only fine if the client gets “x product by a certain date”.
I will show you what that conversation might feel like from your client's perspective if you're bothering them with agile details when they thought they had paid you to worry about the details of how it gets done.
The Fragile Pizza: a play in one act
Customer: Hi, I'd like to order a large pepperoni pizza please. I am so hungry I couldn't even make it home to eat!
Worker: Well you're in the right place! Here at Petey's Pizza we practice a kitchen methodology called 'FRAGILE' and it's guaranteed to help reduce kitchen mistakes and produce good food of consistent quality!
Customer: Well that sounds great, how long until it's ready?
Worker: Well see, we don't think about a pizza as one big recipe, we like to think about a pizza as a series of steps. This means that we can use your customer feedback to shape how this pizza turns out at any stage during the process…
Customer: Okay, I just want whatever a 'regular' pepperoni pizza is…you know? Just do it like you would normally do it, and let me know when it's ready OK?
Worker: Excuse me, I've prepared a list of the various ingredients we'll be using in the dough and I've written these here with the prices per ingredient right beside the amounts. Before I move ahead with this next phase, can you please sign off on these ingredients, amounts, and prices? Do these look okay to you? I want to make this as easy for you as possible but I can't really begin making the dough until I have that approval to go ahead into the next phase.
Worker: Excuse me, I'm just about to start topping the pizza, but before I continue I just want your feedback on the dough. Does this look right to you?
Customer: I don't know what looks right, you're the professional aren't you? Why are you asking me the customer? I only know what it should look like when it's ready to eat. How long until it's ready for me to eat?
Worker: Oh don't worry, these steps are more of a formality than anything, you don't need to worry about this pizza's overall completion timeline. Look, I've already moved from the 'making the dough' phase into the 'topping' phase, we'll be in the next phase before you know it!
Customer: Okay, just please let me know when it's done.
Worker: I'm so sorry, this pizza is taking more cheese than I originally anticipated, we need to revisit the ingredient list again and make some changes to the amounts. Let me draw up a new list of ingredients, amounts, and prices for you so we can still get the pizza to you on time…
Customer: Look, I'm so hungry right now—just add whatever cheese you need to make a normal pizza!
Worker: Don't worry, this FRAGILE methodology is proven to produce the highest quality results on-time, nearly every time™. It's rarely failed, and when it does it's always the kitchen's fault, not the methodology. Just be patient and everything will be OK.
Customer: How's that pizza coming along?