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Message from discussion oh no not again with the done-done vs. demoable?
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kelly french  
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 More options Feb 7 2012, 3:27 pm
From: kelly french <kelly.fre...@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2012 14:27:41 -0600
Local: Tues, Feb 7 2012 3:27 pm
Subject: Re: [SC] oh no not again with the done-done vs. demoable?
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See page 141 of Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister's "Waltzing with Bears" about
risk management.

You'll find there a story that gives the best answer I've ever heard to
those who keep shouting that the delivery date is to far away.

I've included the story below for your amusement and instruction.
---

    Eary in 1996, one of my clients was the manager of a large
embedded-system software project. Her job was to produce the control
software for a new line of products that marketing was extremely eager to
launch.  The major stakeholder was a marketing manager named Hans, who had
proposed the project and gotten it funded.  Hans was angry when my client's
team came up with a 4Q97 schedule.  He had been hoping for March 31, 1997.
He denounced her estimate at a public meeting as not aggressive enough, and
he follwed up (unfortunately for him) with the statement: "I can prove to
you that beyond March, every month that this product is not ready to ship
will cost this company one-hundred-thousand dollars in lost profit."
    I queried him on his assertion.  "Hans, would that same figure apply to
delivery before March thirty-first, as well? If we delivered by the end of
February, for example, whould that give us an additional
hundred-ten-thousand dollars of profit, beyoind the revenue stream that you
have projected?"
    "Yes," he said. "Definitely."
    "If we could put the product in your hands today"--that was February
1996, when the project had just been funded--"would you be collecting that
additional hundred-ten-thousand dollars per month for the rest of the year?"
    "Yes," he said, a bit less sure of himself now.
    "Well then, Hans, you obviously started this project much too late.  If
you'd kicked it off eighteen months ago, we could be shipping now, and all
those months of hundred-ten-thousand-dollars' extra profit . . ." I let him
figure out the implications.

---

On Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 2:04 PM, Michelle Smith <li...@kentsmiths.com> wrote:
> It all comes down to setting expectations ahead of time.  If you get to the
> point where the client is demanding these things mid project, your mistake
> was much earlier in the project.

> All is not lost - there is still time to educate the client.  That means
> TALKING to the client, and doing so OFTEN.    If you are building
> functional
> software with frequent releases, that helps to engage them and to make them
> feel like they are aware of what is being built.  But you should also make
> sure that your process is transparent, and that they are helping to drive
> the direction of the project between releases.

> They typically want the demos because they aren't confident in what you are
> building or in the progress that you are making.  Most often, these are
> clients who are not technical, so they already feel uncertain about what
> you
> are doing.  More often than not, they've also been burned by a project that
> went very badly in the past, despite assurances from the dev team that "all
> is fine."

> It's a frustration, but it can be overcome, and often the most challenging
> clients become your biggest cheerleaders, if you handle the relationship
> correctly.

> Good luck.

> Michelle

> Dr. Michelle Smith
> Managing Director
> NimblePros LLC
> msm...@nimblepros.com

> -----Original Message-----
> From: software_craftsmanship@googlegroups.com
> [mailto:software_craftsmanship@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Raoul Duke
> Sent: Tuesday, February 07, 2012 2:22 PM
> To: software_craftsmanship@googlegroups.com
> Subject: Re: [SC] oh no not again with the done-done vs. demoable?

> On Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 11:12 AM, Ted M. Young [@jitterted]
> <tedyo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I find "just say no", works well.

> yeah, except for those times when it doesn't.

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