[Sigia-l] Don't go chasing waterfalls?

[andrew at friendlymanual.com]

Quoting Donna <donna at maadmob.net>:

> This is why I'm not in favour of consultant-based design. In doing
> consultancy work you are expected to outline what you'll do and
> when you'll do it and how much it will cost. Then you have to
> follow the plan.  This, to me, is completely ridiculous as I know
> that I would be learning stuff that would change the damn plan.

Hi Donna,

where would the fun be if the world was predictable? :)

Seriously, I recognise the difficulty of sticking to a fixed price in an unfixed
environment. In a former life I did a lot of proposal writing, and we used to
build in a 20% contingency against changing goalposts. Sometimes it was enough,
sometimes it wasn't.

I think I would be in favour of consultant-based design if I were a project
manager/sponsor, and against it if I were the company employing the consultant.
I've seen some very hard-nosed system integrators that delivered a minimum
requirement implementation and left to move onto the next job - I'm not sure
that this is a good path for IA to follow.

Thank you for your thoughts.

Best regards, Andrew

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