You’ve asked a website/blog/podcast consultant to help you launch your tech project. Instead of letting her go away and do what she does best, you:

• Email the consultant 10-times a day
• Hog her time over the phone with silly questions
• And demand to see the work in progress online.

Sorry to break it to you, but you’ve just become the worst client ever. Bugging the consultant for every little thing will turn your technology project into a nightmare.

Pretty soon, the consultant will stop taking your calls and worst yet, will start to treat your project like a bad rash. Instead of getting the best, you’ll get something mediocre as the consultant rushes to launch your project to get you out of her hair.

What can you do so you give the consultant the space to produce a masterpiece? Here’s some tips from my 12-years being a project manager in the tech field and being the buffer between the client (you) and the technical resources.

Acknowledge that you can’t know it all

If you knew everything about technology, then you wouldn’t have hired a consultant, right? Even if you did, you’re probably too busy to spend 2-weeks designing and launching your own blogsite or website. You are an expert in your business, the consultant is an expert in her’s. Stick to what you know and let the consultant do what she does best.

Trust that you attracted a consultant who won’t snow you

I know that the #1 reason people babysit a consultant is because of fear. You fear that the consultant will charge you thousands of dollars to add a new feature, or she’s on the beach relaxing for days and not doing anything on your project. Just relax. List your fears, share them with your consultant, then trust your instincts.

Release the process

The way you manage your own clients will be vastly different from the way the consultant will manage your tech project. While she’s working on your blog, podcast or website, it’s not the time to “suggest” changes to how she does things. If she uses an online web tool to manage tasks and you use a spreadsheet, just use the process your consultant has set up. Let go of trying to own what she’s doing and you’ll find that this will free you up to focus on what’s really pressing in your business.

Be open to hiccups

Technology is like a small child – it’s unpredictable and fussy. Your consultant may have Internet access for 99% of the time and just before your blogsite or podcast is to launch, she loses access. For 3-days. This is not the consultant’s fault, so here are some things I can recommend you can do to plan for these hiccups:

• Never launch on a Friday. This was a requirement when I was a project manager at Sun. If I did the project plan and I noticed that the go live date fell on a Friday, it was switched to Monday. No matter how much the client cried, cursed or screamed, I would stick to my guns and launch the first day of the workweek.
• Designate a beta launch before the real launch. This helps you work out the kinks. A beta launch is kind of like a real launch, however, you only alert a small group of people and use the time to work out any bugs. Give yourself a week to 10-days between the beta launch and real launch.
• Whatever timeline your consultant gives you, add 30% in terms of number of days. This is a project management trick. If a resource says it’ll take him 7-days to create a design for a website, I always add another few days to his schedule. I don’t share this with the graphic designer. Instead, I put this into my project timeline and I then adjust my go live date accordingly.

Always schedule a lessons learned meeting

Once the project is live, the money has been paid and your blog/website/podcast is operating at optimal levels, schedule a 1-hour lessons learned meeting. This is your opportunity to tell the consultant what worked well and what could be improved. Did you notice I didn’t say what worked vs what didn’t work? I purposely used what worked vs. improvements because this is a time to suggest solutions and offer praise. Leave the bellyaching and the need to pass blame for your journal or sympathetic spouse.

If you’re in the same town, schedule your lessons learned meeting over lunch. If it’s not physically possible to meet in person, do this over the phone in a space where you’re both relaxed. This is now your opportunity to share and document all the things that you liked about the project and the things you feel could be done better. Nothing will be fixed in this meeting, but at least you both have a benchmark on how to make the next project even more of a success.

Inspired by a post by Seth Godin How to create a great website