The Glare of Misaligned Vision

The blue glare of the overhead projector flickers against the back wall, illuminating 106 lines of code that shouldn’t exist. We are sitting in a conference room that smells faintly of stale coffee and expensive leather, the kind of room where budgets go to die. Across the table, the CEO is staring at the screen with a look of profound disappointment. It is a look I have seen at least 26 times in the last 6 years. He says the words that every developer dreads: “This is exactly what we specified in the requirements document, but now that I see it, it’s not what we need at all.”

My phone buzzed at 5:06 am this morning with a wrong number call from a guy named Gary who was desperately looking for a tow truck in Nebraska, and honestly, explaining to Gary that I couldn’t haul his Chevy out of a ditch was a more productive conversation than this one. At least Gary knew his problem was a ditch. This CEO thinks his problem is the button placement, but his real problem is that he spent 6 months asking for a bridge when he actually needed a boat.

The PhD in Human Nature: River F.T.

I think about River F.T. often in these moments. River is a union negotiator I met during a particularly grueling contract dispute 16 years ago. River didn’t have a college degree, but they had a PhD in human nature and a voice that sounded like gravel being crushed by a steamroller. I once watched River sit in a room with 46 angry warehouse workers who were demanding a very specific, very expensive new ventilation system for the breakroom.

River stood up, looked at the schematics, and told the workers they were being idiots. River didn’t give them what they asked for; River got them what they actually needed: a thermal barrier and a repurposed HVAC line from the main office. By the time the project was finished, the breakroom was 26 degrees cooler and cost 86 percent less than the fans would have.

The Core Distinction: Hands vs. Brains

That is the difference between being a vendor and being a partner. A vendor is a pair of hands. You tell a vendor to dig a hole, and they dig a hole. If you told them to dig it in the middle of a highway, they might shrug and mention the traffic, but they’ll keep digging because you’re paying the bill.

A partner, however, is a brain. A partner asks why you want a hole in the first place. Are you looking for water? Are you burying a treasure? Because if you’re trying to trap a bear, a hole in the highway is a terrible idea, and a partner will tell you that to your face, even if it makes the meeting uncomfortable for 36 minutes.

I have made the mistake of being a vendor far too often. There was a project back in 2016 where I built a complex multi-layered dashboard for a logistics company. They wanted every single data point-all 256 of them-visible on the main screen at all times. I told them it would be cluttered. I told them it would be unreadable. They insisted. They were the customer, right? So I built it. I spent 106 hours making sure every little widget fit into the grid. When we launched, the users hated it so much they went back to using Excel spreadsheets and sticky notes.

Partnership in High-Risk Domains

When you look at the landscape of specialized development, specifically in the way ElmoSoft handles these friction points, you realize that the ‘order taker’ model is essentially a form of professional negligence.

In a field like financial technology, the stakes are not just about user frustration; they are about compliance, security, and the movement of billions of dollars. If a client asks for a feature that creates a security vulnerability or violates a regulatory standard, saying ‘yes’ isn’t being helpful-it’s being an accomplice. You need a partner who has the backbone to say ‘no’ 46 times if it means the 47th answer is the one that actually solves the underlying problem without breaking the system.

The Path to Functionality

Saving Millions by Deleting Reports

I recall a specific instance where a client in the middle of a massive digital transformation insisted on migrating 1006 legacy reports into a new cloud system. It was a six-month estimate just for that task. Our team sat down and did a deep dive into the server logs.

The client was asking us to spend $126,000 to move digital trash. We fought them on it. We saved them 156 days of development time and a massive amount of technical debt. They didn’t get what they asked for, but they were thrilled with the result.

Driving Toward the Cliff

We often hide behind the ‘requirements document’ because it provides a paper trail for blame. But that’s a coward’s way to build software. If you know a project is heading for a cliff and you keep driving because the passenger told you to, you’re still the one with your hands on the wheel.

This is why I’ve started including a ‘Provocation Phase‘ in my work. It’s a period of 16 days at the start of every project where we do nothing but challenge every assumption the client has. We ask the ‘stupid’ questions. We look for the uninsulated oven behind the wall.

Turning Off the Projector

When we finally wrapped up that demo with the CEO-the one who hated the product he had spent 6 months meticulously defining-we didn’t just apologize and start over. We took the projector, turned it off, and spent 46 minutes talking about his day-to-day frustrations.

We found out that the feature he was most proud of-the one that took the most time to build-was actually a workaround for a problem that had been solved by a different department 26 weeks ago. He was confused. He was overwhelmed. And he was looking for someone to lead him, not just follow his instructions.