Re: null event causing concern

John Ashton wrote:

> <snipped>
>
>You're right. It is a political issue. Our client is a division of a
>large company that would like to use all our skills and give us access
>to the tools we need. However, the overall company has an outsourcing
>arrangement for all infrastructure work. This arrangement will not
>change and has been 'pre-paid'. The division cannot say "we know you
>pay money for company X to do DBA work but they don't do the job well
>so pay again to get company Y to do the same job (but properly)".
>
>So, we can advise but not control anything to do with DBA functions,
>UNIX or the hardware. That's why, for example, company X set up oracle
>on RAID 5, against our advice. At least we convinced them not to use a
>single tablespace and that range partitioning was a good thing (which
>wasn't easy).
>
>If I were working for the client directly, I'd probably resign.
>However it is the consultancy I work for that is facing the problem.
>My company would like to be able to avoid difficult projects like this
>but then I'd say that would be "Goodbye small consultancy".
>
>You may say that I "resign yourself to doing an inadequate job, at
>best". I prefer to think that I'm doing a more than adequate job but
>that the end result is inadequate due to 3rd party sabotage.
>
>Time, now, to strike up the violins as I return to the realities of
>the small business world to do the best I can with what I have...
>
>

Perhaps the issue is not so much political as legal. It sounds to me like some entity needs to learn
how to write a contract so as to avoid this issue in the future.

I would suggest taking a copy of your current customer contract to an attorney that specializes in
contract law and invest a few dollars in a rewrite.

-- 
Daniel Morgan
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/oad/oad_crs.asp
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/aoa/aoa_crs.asp
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
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