🚀 go-pugleaf

On Wed, 16 Aug 1995 21:04:27 -0700, Nevin ":-]" Liber (nevin@CS.Arizona.EDU) wrote:
: 
: And the "order of magnitude less expensive" statistic comes from where
: exactly?  Can you or your next door neighbor cite the source?

    Internal cost studies and ersonal experience.
 
: Also, your model is that the developers are your customers, not the
: users.  Not a very practical model for the consumer market.  I'd rather
: have developers do a little more work up front so that the order of
: magnitude more users have an easier time.

    In this environment, the consumer market is nearly irrelevent.  The
user is an empoyee or a group of employees attempting to perform some
business function, the customer is a manager or corporate officer responsible
for seeing that business function is done.

    Most applications of this sort are only going to be used by half-a-dozen
employees, and the IS shop is responsible for building dozens of such 
applications every year.  And the customer wants the applications delivered
within a few months of identifying the need.

    Applications of this type can be critical to the future of an organization
in a way that choice of word-processor can never be.  Think back to when
MCI first launched its ``Friends and Family'' discount program.  When AT&T's
management went looking for ways to compete, they discovered that they would
need to make significant changes to their customer contact data-entry systems.
Apparently IS told them that it would take 18 months to field a system that
provided for capturing incentive program information.  How many customers
do you think AT&T lost because they couldn't start a competing incentive
plan until they had the software to support it?

-- 
the Windows API has done more to retard skill development
than anything since COBOL maintenance.
                           --Larry O'Brien