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Probably because the reasons are diverse. One school of thought
says hire Generic Consultant Company to write the specification because they've done
lots of these. They don't realize that GCC may not be doing
much analysis; they boilerplate. I keep seeing RFPs from them
with the requirement to support "XTML", "XML" and "HTML". We
see RFPs that require NIBRS support but are for agencies in
UCR states. NIBRS is the future but the customer can't use
it yet. We are asked to interface to legacy systems that
duplicate effort and data to incredible extents.
So we iron this stuff out in contract negotiations and in
the response language. It is our business to know
our technology and their business. If we get a customer that relies more
on a generic consulting firm than on the RFP process, it
is fairly difficult to keep from selling them more than
they need. In other words, losing while being circumspect
is still losing. We will walk away from that kind of
business because we know that given unrealistic requirements,
they will be back again. It happens more than some would
believe.
There is no substitute for having local skilled analysts
when it comes time to buy, build, fight or flee. The
context is fusion. What is needed, what is available,
what works now, what might be working when needed, what
is needed next Zed. Faced with that exercise, too many
executives turn to a marketing guru or a consultant but
fail to get in touch with the worker bees. Even if they
do, they may not have the savvy to sort out the signals
but do have the responsibility to decide when to jump into
the water.
Oh... then there is the budgeting exercise that hopefully
results in funding before the next election. :-)
len
From: Betty Harvey [mailto:harvey@eccnet.com]
I think the article is fairly accurate about what has been happening.
Anyone in the trenches has seen some of these disasters. We have all seen
major companies lock into software that goes out of business before the
software is even implemented. I think the article could have even delved
deeper into the problem. One quote I thought could correlate directly
with what we are seeing with XML specifications and technologies:
'But companies don't always need what they get. "They overbuy
and get more features, more functions than they need," says
analyst David Smith of Gartner'
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