Won't someone please think of the customer.

Here we find ourselves in an odd situation, where I am going to suggest to you that the customer, or at least what the customer is asking for, is not always the right way to go.

What's more, is that simply prattering around saying "Oh, you are a horrible person because you are not giving the customer what they are asking for," is absolutely retarded.

We have a situation where we have an extremely sensitive system that lacks certain functionality.  (well, tons of functionality, actually... the system really sucks)  We have limited staff and have all agreed (including the customer) that the primary focus will be investing time to get off the system... and all changes to the existing system will be shelved.

This is no small accomplishment, by the way... this is a ridiculously demanding customer with absolutely no sense of reality when it comes to staffing and priorities.  Fix it all, fix it now, damn the cost, damn the people...

So some developer pops up and says (in a room with everyone including the customer in it)  "Pfft!  That's easy to fix.  Here, let me whip up this code here..."



Noooooooooooooooooooo!!!

BACK AWAY FROM THE COMPILER.

So he does it.  Takes him probably 20 minutes to get it done, and lets everyone... the customer, senior management, us... everyone... know that it's done and ready to go.

Needless to say, who has to be the bad guy?  Me.  I call up the customer and explain why we don't want to do it.  We have a tough conversation,  but he ultimately agrees.  I update the ticket to say that we're not going to move ahead.  (I should have spoken to the developer on the phone first, but I'm also the gate on these kinds of things so usually what I say goes.)

What does the developer do?  Sends a message to all saying he thinks I'm being silly and standing in front of what the customer needs to improve their experience.  What's wrong with me?  Why aren't I thinking of the customer?  Tsk tsk!

So we have some big meeting, and it's agreed that we're going to do it... I point out that even if we decided we didn't want to, that we're essentially boned because we involved the customer in the conversation about how easy this is.  I cite my various concerns about it  not working, committing more than 15 minutes on something that is a non-priority, etc. but agree to proceed.

We proceed.

Guess what?  It didn't work!  Shocker.  So now what happens?  Someone on my team has to go through and come up with creative solutions as to how to make it work.  It's a systems thing, after all.  Meanwhile, the items we are supposed to be working on (including getting them off of this system to begin with) are sitting idle.

Fan-freaking-tastic.

Can you say, "I told you so?"

Sometimes the people who run the systems are the ones you should be listening to, and the last people you should heed are the customers.  And don't even get me started on developers.