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Resource driven vs Deadline Driven Gigs and improving the customer experience


pauldvl

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One concept of basic project management is determining whether tasks are resource driven (sequential tasks cannot be completed until resources become available) or they are deadline driven (assumes unlimited resources are available).
Fiverr defaults to deadline driven, which is a problem, unless you have a team of unlimited resources to work on every order as soon as it comes in. I am my only resource and orders for my most popular gig can take up to 3 to 5 days or longer to complete. If I get 3 or 4 orders, I have to immediately go to the resolution center to tell the customer when I can start their order.
The bigger problem is that if your gig says 5 days, then customers are right to expect it to be done in 5 days when they place the order. So, expectations are set when they are placing an order. You may have heard it said that disappointment stems from the failure to meet expectations.
The “proper” way for gig timing to work should be like this:

  1. Seller declares if their gig is resource driven (which will schedule timing for incoming orders in sequence), or they are deadline driven (they can handle as many orders as they get). You could even do an in-between where the seller states they can do x number of orders on the default gig deadline, then orders need to switch to resource driven. For example, they can handle 5 orders at any given time, starting with the 6th order they would need a delayed start for the next group of 5 orders.
  2. If the gig is set to “resource driven”, the system would look to see how many orders the seller has in their queue and run an algorithm to determine the earliest start date (example, there are 2 basic gig orders in the que each scheduled for 2 days each, a total of 4 days, subtract how much time the seller has been working on the first order, then you know the earliest start date for that next order) and inform the customer - so expectations are set upfront. If the gig is set to deadline driven, then it is business as usual, no change to the existing system.
  3. A work around would be to let the seller declare if their gig is resource driven or not. If so, and they have more than one order in the queue, then display a message to the customer stating, “This seller has multiple orders in their queue, please contact them to determine gig timing prior to placing an order”. That way the seller can set timing expectations.
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It’s just my thought but how about to use order limit in queue? Would that work for you?

No, an order limit means you are turning away work and that isn’t good for me, or Fiverr.

Fortunately, my repeat customers know to contact me first to determine my availability.

Plus, have 25+ years in project management - resource driven vs deadline driven is super basic PM101 work planning, it shouldn’t be hard for Fiverr to implement.

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This is a very interesting alternative solution to this problem/complaint. Most clamor for ‘let us reject/limit orders’ which is easily understandable to the masses as a solution, because it doesn’t take a deep understanding of business, logistics, supply-and-demand, market forces and consumer behavior, self-awareness, and basic math.

I like your solution.

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