Learning things the hard way is definitely unforgettable

It's not the same when you're the one managing a project.

Scope's been limited, priorities defined, etc.  But somehow, there are still those times that managing changes could be tedious sometimes.

Verbally you might have already negotiated with the client and all that. The approval has already been given actually.  And yet... Sometimes you still get those moments that you would hear the client saying that the changes have to be done because there's something wrong with what they told you before.  Especially when you're not familiar with their domain. I recall asking a particular question face to face and yet here we are -- we need to implement certain changes that would affect a particular screen and other functions within that screen.

There are also times when you would have had negotiations done about how things should work.  True, you are part of the dev team and you're not the actual user.  But when you're building on top of another app with a particular feature already and it works nicely, why shouldn't that particular feature remain as is?  Why should it be changed?  Especially when the actual user hasn't seen it.  You kept on negotiating that it should't be changed anymore so that your team could work on the other things.  And yet sometimes the client would push for the change too late - like you're practically done with the entire thing and you've already done the low priority stuff.  Why wasn't it mentioned for the past two to three weeks?

My mistake was that I didn't write it down, that it was already agreed upon, that the negotiations were over.   Even if those things were already met with approval, I realize that it's not quite set already, that people do change their minds and so on.  I know I should have learned this before but I haven't taken it to heart just yet.  Now, I am taking it to heart as well as other learnings with regards to handling projects.

JM reminds me that as time goes by, these changes will not be as frustrating anymore because I'd learn how to deal with them.  Not just that, I'd probably be a bit immune to them by then.  Having personally worked on some aspects of the project, I have a good idea on how difficult it could be to change some things. But still, it is a part of life, part of software development.  And that is why I will strive to learn more and apply what I've learned.  I'd like to be better at business analysis and project management.