Now that our team had considered the problem and decided how to solve it, we approached the client with our proposed solution. We wanted to tell her about the problems that may come up and what they will cost in terms of time and money. Software development is a game of trade-offs. It is like telling the customer that they may either have a sunroof or a bigger engine in their car, but the engineer doesn't have enough time to add both.
When discussing the prototype with the client, we had to consider their level of expertise. Our client did not care about what style of coding we used or problems we ran into. They wanted to know about the final result. Their primary question was, "Does it work?". If developers go into detail about problems they run into, the client will stop listening and ask them, "What does this mean to me" once they're finished. As a technically minded person, developers have the urge to talk with clients about the creation they've been working on day and night, but they must resist!
Previous Step Next StepThis program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, look on the web at on the web at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html or write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
To contact the director of the S2S Project, send email to Vicki L. Almstrum, almstrum@cs.utexas.edu or write to her at The Department of Computer Sciences C0500, The University of Texas at Austin, TAY 2.124, Austin, TX, USA 78712.