[OT] Extra time spent

[H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d]

On Fri, Jun 06, 2014 at 05:14:34PM +0200, Timon Gehr via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On 06/06/2014 04:37 PM, H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> >Yeah that sounds very familiar. A typical situation at my job goes
> >something like this:
> >
> >Customer: I want feature X!
> >Sales rep: OK, we'll implement X in 1 month.
> >Customer: No, I want it by last month!
> >Sales rep: OK, and we'll throw in feature Y too, at no extra charge.
> >(Later)
> >Sales rep (to coders): Here's a new project for you: implement X and Y.
> >Coders: That sounds really complicated! It will take us 2 months.
> >Sales rep: What?! We don't have 2 months! They want this by*last*  month!
> >Coders: That's impossible. Even the quickest hack we can do will take 1
> >	month.
> >Sales rep: This is a huge customer and it's going to cost us a billion
> >	dollar deal! You have to*make*  it work!
> >Coders: sigh... OK, 3 weeks.
> >Sales rep: No, yesterday.
> >Coders: Fine, tomorrow we'll make a paper-n-glue model.
> >Sales rep: Today.
> >Coders: Sigh...
> 
> Isn't the fundamental problem here that the customer will pay a billion
> dollars even if the software ends up being full of bugs?

Yes, because the customer is a corporate entity, whose upper management
doesn't know (nor care) about the difference between good software and
working but very buggy software. They dictate the financial decisions,
and their IT department just has to live with it. So it really goes both
ways. Company A's upper management decides to acquire software X from
company B, and company B's upper management decides on an unrealistic
schedule, and both A's and B's tech staff have to suffer the
consequences. A's tech staff can't produce good software in that
unrealistic timeframe, and B's tech staff have to deal with all the bugs
that end up in X.


--T