No matter how much you plan, how well your spec is written and how many times you may or may not have prototyped a development project, there inevitably comes a time when the client changes their mind and wants changes made to an ongoing project. In a well designed code base, even pretty significant changes often aren’t a problem, but even so I frequently find myself feeling slightly aggrieved at the change.

Now this is silly. I get paid by the hour, so any change I’m asked to make costs the client the amount of time it takes for me to make that change. From a business point of view this is great, it’s all extra work keeping me busy and paying the bills. It’s also the best kind of work – raw coding hours with no time spent in meetings or writing proposals.

So why do I feel narked at having to make changes? I guess it boils down to being passionate about what I do and not wanting to see the client waste money. The ideal scenario for any project is that it goes as smoothly and quickly as possible, therefore getting to the end result with minimum expenditure. No one wants to pay more for a project than necessary, and I don’t like thinking my clients aren’t getting good value. Wasting time frustrates me.

But then there’s also the more selfish side of me that thinks “oh FFS, I’ve just written that!” and despairs at knowing a whole chunk of code I’ve laboured over is just going to get deleted and never make it into production. But really I think that just comes down to caring about my work too. So on the whole I don’t think I need to worry about taking it personally.

I think it’s ok to feel rotten about deleting a bunch of work. Don’t you?