Re: How would you approach this?

In article <64ea97cf.0310261908.51048256_at_posting.google.com>, Bruce <brennie_at_dcsi.net.au> writes
>> > > > There are other requirements - but they are not known/defined at this
>> > > > stage. We were lucky to get this much detail. The CEO for the company
>> > > > we're writing this application for is a very hard man to pin down. He
>> > > > wants it now but he doesn't know what it is exactly. We had a five
>> > > > minute chat with him and, based on that, we come up with:-
>> > > >
>
>If the requirements are known to exist but are not yet defined then
>this also means that you do not have any way of knowing the required
>business rules for the client. Not only doesn't he want you to know
>his requirements, he also wants you to fail - for his personal
>aggenda. If you don't know what his aggenda is then it is foolish to
>even work with him - he is not being honourable in his dealings with
>you as the developer and it is then probable that he is not being
>honourable with anyione else either.

Don't you think YOU are being rather naive? When did you last have a client who knew what they wanted. Or, quite likely, even knew how to start trying to explain what they wanted!

Actually, you proved exactly that a bit further down, where you sat down and persuaded a client to go through and specify their requirements. The problem is, what do you do if they don't know how to explain that?

As is often the case, here we have the SQL guys thinking they live in an ideal world, thinking that their clients actually KNOW and CAN EXPLAIN what they want. The real world ain't like that!

It's just so *easy* in MV to knock up a demo, and because MV relates to the real world, not ivory-towered theory, very often it doesn't take much to turn what started out as a demo system into rock-solid realworld  production system. Maybe it's not hard with SQL, but it's a pushover for us to design a system based on partial requirements, show the customer and get them to explain further, and then repeat the loop.

Oh - and in case you're thinking that putting into production something that started as a demo system is daft - well the big problem is always getting the file layout (or as SQL would put it, the table layout) right, so I think you would do the same as us - demo file layouts until you get it right and the final demo goes into production ... except we can probably demo a lot more cheaply :-)

Cheers,
Wol

-- 
Anthony W. Youngman - wol at thewolery dot demon dot co dot uk
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