had a client ask me last week:
"can we just change this dropdown to a multi-select? should be a 5 minute fix, right?"
to someone who doesn't code, it's just text on a screen.
what they don't see:
- schema update
- broken api endpoints
- refactoring state
- new edge cases
i used to just say yes, eat the 4 hours of extra work, and regret it later.
explaining the backend complexity to a non-tech client never works. they just think you're overcomplicating things or making excuses.
what finally worked for me is setting a hard rule: once a milestone is approved, any change to it either waits for phase 2, or uses an extra revision credit.
the second there is a visible limit, clients suddenly stop thinking every idea is a "quick tweak".
how do you handle clients who think full feature rewrites only take 5 minutes?
Top comments (3)
That visible limit is doing the real work. I’d make the next step explicit at the moment of the ask: restate the approved milestone, label this as a preference change rather than a defect, then give choices—defer it, swap another item out, or quote the extra effort. “Happy to handle it; it changes the approved behavior, so I’ll confirm impact before touching it” is enough. No need to explain the whole backend.
giving them the option to swap an item out works surprisingly well. putting the trade-off on them usually makes them drop it on the spot. do you put that swap rule in the contract upfront or just use it when they push?
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