This is the moment when you could suggest to your customers that,
as they can now envisage potential additional functionality having used
that which you have delivered, those features not yet implemented in
the current version could be put into the requirements prioritization
stage of what will be a new project – the next version of the program.
So you can avoid being trapped in the continuous expansion of your
project by starting out afresh with a blank sheet of paper. Once you’ve
delivered what they asked for, that’s it. If it isn’t what they now need,
then provided that you have agreed a specification, and can demon-
strate delivery, there is no problem.
On the other hand, resolving matters where there is a vague or
incomplete description – or worse, different and unwritten conceptions
– of what was to have been done, can be much more of a challenge.
Dealing with bad stuff: focusing on the successfully
delivered objectives
There is nothing so bad in application development that some good
cannot be found in it. If nothing else, everyone concerned has learnt
what not to do again.
If you haven’t managed to deliver everything that was wanted, at
least you’ve got some of the way there, and can do better next time.
In some circumstances – such as when there is no agreed definition
of the functionality that is to be delivered – success will always be
impossible. If you should find yourself in this situation then try to
involve a trusted third party, preferably one with experience of resolv-
ing these kinds of disputes, as a mediator.
Alternatively, if you find that your users are concentrating on a small
percentage of functionality that you might have been unable to deliver
due to entirely unforeseeable external circumstances, try to bring their
attention to bear more on the enormous amount of good stuff that you
have actually done, whilst you simultaneously attempt to work out how
soon you could give them the bits that they are shouting most about.
In a (relative) disaster such as complete failure to get the customer
to accept delivery of the final release, the first thing that you should do
is work out what is the worst that could happen, and then plot how
to cope with that. After this exercise, everything else will be easier to
handle.
So, for example, once you have worked out how you could defend
your actions in court if necessary, and decided whether such action
118 PROJECT SIGNOFF