In the past, I have always written about the importance of having an open relationship with your clients and the benefits it has for the products. Having an open relationship helps to being in compassion and lets you think from your client’s perspective. It helps us to understand the needs of the product better and do what is required.

I recently got into a situation where my compassion towards the project came in handy. One of the offshore products that I have been working on, hit a roadblock with a third party integrations.

There were some constraints which prevented the situation to clear up for a couple of days. I was not in contact with the team as we were working across different timezone. But I knew the importance of the integration and the absence of any fallback. I put in a couple of fallbacks on my own without asking for approval and made them available on priority. From my relation and compassion, I got the sense that the value added by the fallback would be much more than the whole approval process.

The client came back later and appreciated the fallbacks that I put in place. These would help them be in a working situation till other things clear up.

These compassionate steps come in place only when we realise the importance of making the product better, and we are sure of what would be needed to get through the current situation.