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Actually, yes. It's called liquidated damages if your system
fails to meet the requirements in the contract. It is not a
new endeavour. It is quite common. As I read this thread,
it occurs to me that many here are focused entirely on the
programming side of the argument and too few are acquainted
with the business processes (not what you are coding; what
your sales, marketing and contracts personnel execute to
work with their customers).
It is part of the pressure to use commodity schemas where
there is a requirement to interoperate across distributed and
loosely coupled organizations. While we may not like all the
details, and we do have to XSLT in and out of local systems,
it is the occurrence of schemas like Global Justice XML that
pushes our customers to converge. They don't always but in
every case that they don't, their costs go up due to the
high cost of localized, customized variations on what is
otherwise a turnkey system.
The problem is changing the tire in the intersection. From
one direction (say committees) come schemas, from another
comes an evolving framework (say DNA, ASP, Longhorn, etc.)
and then there are the local agency authorities who insist
on preserving local reporting requirements. If any of
these push a schedule out or cause a post-implementation
system to fail, negotiations follow. We've never lost
a customer to this or been sued, but we are rare in our
business for that because in a firm fixed price model,
we bid higher implementation costs and accept the risk
of losing bids for the benefit of higher quality.
It isn't "Pay me now or pay me later." That's cost plus.
It's "Bill me now and fix me later at your expense." If
you ever wonder about outsourcing, this is ONE of the
causes.
len
From: Rick Marshall [mailto:rjm@zenucom.com]
and if the schema changes, but not the xslt, and someone suffers
financial loss - tax returns fail, orders lost, etc - who pays?
or will this be a whole new endeavour for lawyers? do i need extra
profesional indemnity to cover what happens when you change something
without telling me?
this thread is starting to worry me....
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