Earlier this week, we had a great call with a new contact at an existing client. We were investigating ways to improve workflows and help their team generate more, quality content for their blog. As part of the call, I saw a quick win we could provide that day to reduce friction in editing their content. As a developer, it was something I instantly knew a solution for that a project manager or customer support person might have missed.

Why wouldn't a client always have access to a developer?

A developer's time can be expensive. Particularly with the way most developers work. Having dedicated time and focus for work is precious. Taking thirty minute breaks to join meetings throughout the day can torpedo their productivity. 4 hours of development time scattered throughout the day is less productive than 2 hours of dedicated time.

Having a project manager, or a "client success" manager, is great to help mitigate this impact on a developer's time. However, this can be a trade-off in efficiency on the client's budget. You will not get as much bang for your buck with this approach.

Hold up there bucko!

Every agency person just put their coffee down to draft me an angry response! Well, we don't have comments on this blog so you'll have to send them in an email.

But, jokes aside, I don't mean that as a negative against that approach. For most clients, they need a project manager. They need someone who's primary job is to help define their goals, plan how and when those goals will be accomplished, and manage the team to get them across the finish line.

Additionally, as a client, if you're worried about the competency, sustainability, and health of your partner agency, you'd be happy to have someone leading in this way.

But can the disconnect be too far?

We first connected with a client nearly a decade ago when their Salesforce agency needed someone on the client’s side to handle website updates related to a special project.

Our client brought us in to develop an API on their sales / checkout process that the Salesforce team could utilize with their connection. We had an initial call with their developer to get an understanding of what they were looking for from us. It was a high-level call where the next step was investigative and would require a follow-up and final approvals on the process from their team.

We never had another meeting with the developer. All communication was done through the project manager and the developer rarely responded directly to emails.

We finally received a plugin of their connection. It was a single php file labeled magic.php.

I was forced to guess what they wanted based on the structure of that file and eventually just modified their code to create a connection that would work.

Where LimeCuda falls on this spectrum

If you need a developer, you have access to one. We don't gate keep development resources. In fact Blake and I as "project managers" were pushing pixels before we were managing projects. I'm the lead developer for LimeCuda and if there is a need for me to look into something, give my opinion, or strategize on different approaches, I'm always available to help.

That's what makes us a little bit different.