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As someone that has spent years in consultancies and agencies, this one stings a lot. A slightly different scenario I see all the time, even today, is when a c
by EnderMB 7y ago
As someone that has spent years in consultancies and agencies, this one stings a lot.
A slightly different scenario I see all the time, even today, is when a company takes on a fixed-cost job to build something. We come up with a basic MVP feature set, run it through the standard MoSCoW process, and then estimate how long each feature will take.
We end up with a final figure, and it's over budget. We strip things out, and it's still over budget. Rather than cut out features the client wants, estimates are cut down to fit the budget, or planning time is stripped out and we're expected to go straight into a build.
Funny enough, these projects always run over, and we always end up missing a ton of stuff the client wanted, because in the process of being lean we forgot to do any kind of documentation of changes, or to explicitly get in writing what the feature is supposed to do.
- oceanghost 7y agoI worked for a company that would do this exactly, with an additional variable. The sales folks' bonuses were based on the original estimate, not any overruns. So they'd promise the customer a certain feature set then, write up the minimum feasible estimate, collect their bonuses, then blame engineering for the extra cost, feature creep, etc... when it was all by design.