Mary Fisher wrote:

Makes one wonder about the value of IT designers and engineers ... :-)

Like anyone else (as a class) they will do what is asked of them if it
will put food on the table.


Does that apply to you?

Good question.

I would hope not, but I guess I have been fortunate to never have been
tested too hard in that way (or maybe it is just the type of projects /
contracts I accept tends to pre filter getting into too many ethical
quandaries)

What food?

Tonight alas was a takeaway (the routine was a little disrupted by
carting our eldest off to A&E with a hurt arm after a little armchair
climbing expedition ended a little more abruptly that she anticipated).
The good news is it is probably not broken (as best they could tell from
the X-ray)

Still, roast porky and apple sauce tomorrow which should make up for it! ;-)

In fact the less scrupulous prefer it that way, because they can charge
them far more in the long run.


Is that the voice of personal experience? If so I don't respect it.

I have not personally worked on a project that practised that sort of
approach[1]. However it is common with many of the larger consulting
companies, especially the ones good at winning large IT projects from
the government it seems.... (yes that would also be the ones with
directors and former employees in prominent positions in government)! -
cynical?

[1] I only ever worked a total of three years for GEC anyway before a
friend and I got so hacked off with them we quit and started Internode
Ltd.

To be fair however, the blame does not rest totally with the suppliers -
some of it comes down to the way the procurement is done.

It used to be that big government projects (especially defence and
aerospace ones) were commissioned on a "cost plus" basis - i.e. the
customer paid for whatever work needed doing to finish the job. The
government moved away from doing this because they felt they were
getting milked by the suppliers, and the suppliers had no incentive to
ever actually finish the work.

Hence the move to fixed price working. The danger of quoting a fixed
price however, is that customers *never* know up front what they want
let alone need, and so the supplier could end up committing unlimited
resources to unlimited amounts of work for a fixed payment. The ones who
made this mistake are no longer going concerns in general.

Hence the current style of baseline contracts that define a core level
of delivery, but with a framework for charging extra for changes imposed
by the customer that generate extra work. Needless to say it is here
there is great scope for good / sharp negotiating on both sides.

--
Cheers,

John.

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