I'm the contact point with the customer for project requirements and timeline. However I outsourced the project to an external software house.
The customer has very changing and vague requirements, but the software house need clear directions and a closed contract with all specifications.
I think we have a 50% margin on the project for now, but I'm worried about deadlines. Furthermore I don't know how to synchronise customer and development:
customer now want a 2 weeks checkpoint delivery (on a 6 month project) starting from now, but I don't have yet a feedback from software house about requirements and about their deadlines or even feasibility. So basically I need to agree with the customer some deadlines that have not yet been agreed with the provider.
The only way out I see is to fix arbitrary deadlines with the customer and find excuses when they will not be met...
How would I explain the situation to the software house and which kind of contract should I ask?