Failed communication

We received a request to develop one service, it was a copy startup (a competitor to established products), we understood that in order for the product to take place, we need a huge marketing budget, not just a good product.  A superficial technical requirement and a general concept in the form of presentations were provided. We, in turn, offered to make a detailed discovery and, based on its approval, work on the Fix Price model. So they did, Discovery was approved by the customer, the cost of development was agreed.

Further, during development, the client began to demand changes in one of the important functions. In his opinion, we did not refer to fixing the requirements (although we could safely do so) and decided that it was easier to do what the client was asking for. We greatly regretted this later. The client, seeing that we conceded once, began to demand from us the introduction of new functions that were not in Discovery. Naturally, we refused to do it within the agreed budget and deadlines. In the future, we listened for a long time that we were to blame for the fact that the startup did not take place. And we did not receive a full payment, having handed over to the client what we stopped at.

After this failure, we concluded that we would never, under any circumstances, make concessions, no matter how easy they were, and deviate from agreements, as well as take on uncompetitive startups.