Tuesday, January 31, 2006
I'm not gonna mention names, but a colleague told me about a great example of a classic backwards mindset at most consulting companies, and I had to share.
At the end of the fiscal year, Client Z has X dollars left in their budget. They have to use it or lose it, and of course Consulting Company Y wants a piece of it. What results is a conversation like this:
Z: What can you make us for X dollars?
Y: What do you want?
Z: An E-Commerce site for an area of our business.
Y: Sounds good! You're on!
Y then goes to their technical lead on the project and says "we need an e-commerce site, here is the budget you have and the timeline. We've already calculated how many development hours, and QA hours fit into this budget, and here they are." Basically, they then ask the tech lead to come up with estimates and specs that fit right into their pretty little buckets. When she kindly tells them that's about as crazy as Whitney Houston on a Saturday night, they are shocked. When she starts to break down the project into smaller pieces and look at what they entail, they say "we don't want to get to that level of detail, we just need to know estimates and tasks."
How many times have you been put in this position, where you are asked for your input/opinion/estimates on something, and the answer they really want is for you to just agree to what they've already promised?