Office politics (was Re: Case Sensitivity & @bk)

[Fairlight]

>From inside the gravity well of a singularity, GCC Consulting shouted:
> When IT got wind of this, they wanted it in Access.  I said OK but you'll
> loose some functionality.  Gave then a price of $21,000. to re-write
> the app.  The said fine.  Then reconsidered and said they would do it
> in-house.  That Was 5 years ago and they still don't have the app.

Sounds familiar.  A client of an fP developer client of mine wanted to take
his fP-based business on the web for online orders and commerce.  The fP
developer recommended me flat-out as we'd done many projects together, and
I was supposed to be a shoe-in for it.  Turns out that the end-client puts
out an RFP for the project.  That's fine and well, and I look at the
proposal specifications.

Problem is, he does this in late June and wants it up by August 1. *laugh*
GOOD LUCK.  Minimum suggested time for doing a site redesign, especially
with commerce, was six months, industry-wide at the time.  Anyone who knew
anything would laugh if you wanted production-quality in less than that
without paying through the nose.  I told him flat-out that I could do the
site programming working with the fP developer, but even with unfettered
access to the latter I would want six months to get all the kinks out and
make sure it was stable and that he'd have no problems.  I know how this
stuff goes on and you find things to fix, or they want design changes
mid-stream, and it basically drags out.  I plan for that.  He felt that was
a non-starter, and I politely bowed out of the bidding.

He then went with a big, local web design firm.  A -year and a half-
later, he had a redesigned web site, alright.  One tiny problem:  He still
had -no- commerce integrated to fP.  The major goal had been to get the
commerce going.  They redesigned his site layout and cosmetics but never
achieved the actual end-goal of getting the fP integrated with online
ordering (or any alternative).  But now he has a nice ASP (blech!) based
site that doesn't do any more than it already had.

TO THIS DAY (I checked 2 seconds ago), it hasn't been done.  Actually, the
fP developer told me last fall that we were going to be doing it together,
and then our project got put off until the next dead season due to other
considerations at the time on the end client's side.  It might actually
happen this summer--MAYBE.  Might be another year.

Had I been let in with a reasonable time frame, it would have at least
gotten done--several years ago.  Later than he wanted, but far, far sooner
than he set himself up for.  Possibly even sooner than six months.  I just
refused to be pinned to less than something that's 1/6 the
industry-accepted standard time frame and held accountable if it isn't
working correctly.  That's a recipe for disaster for all parties.

I'm also reminded of an in-house IT department that was a wholly owned
subsidiary of a bank.  It was not only their own IT department, but they
wrote software for other banks as well.  They wrote something for the trust
department of their own bank, and a year and a half later, they delivered
the promised software as requested by the department.  The department
had problems with how -they- had asked for it to be designed, ended up
figuring they couldn't use it, and sent it back for an unspecified amount
of redesign and retooling time.

Sometimes there's no helping people past their shortsightedness.

mark->