Re: Software Vendors

["Dan Bale" <dbale@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Many moons ago, we had a client for whom we wrote a new
financials/inventory/distribution package from scratch on a S/36.

My boss was __very__ thorough on the design of the project, interviewing users
numerous times, having people signing off on the design each step of the way.

The owners were "flaky", though.  One had a favorite saying, "If we can put a
man on the moon, why can't we <<fill in the blank>>?" when he asked for various
new functions outside of the signed-off design specs.  And he was serious about
it.  Finally after several weeks of enduring the harrassment, my
polite-to-a-fault boss responded with, "Give us NASA's budget, and we'll put
your 'man' on the moon!"

Never heard that annoying question again after that!

- Dan Bale


burelle@bigy.com wrote:

Expensive, and slow.  I had a client that said "Make this code monkey-proof, I
want to be able to sit a monkey in that user's seat and he (the monkey) could do
this right."  So we did, it had every bell and whistle known to man (or in this
cause woman), it double checked every dot on every i, it had window lists for
every field, with every possible value, it had commitment control.  It did every
thing it was supposed to do, but it took twice as long to run.  After pouring
three million dollars!!! into this system, they said 'we can't work like this,
take some stuff out!'  So, yes, bug-free (both program logic and user interface)
is possible, as I am fond of saying 'Anything is possible with enough time and
money!' - Jo Ann





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