I am sometimes amazed at the little pearls of wisdom you can come across on Twitter. Couldn’t help but share some of these truths of project management/web development:
11. Ask the customer what he wants, then tell him what he’s going to get
There are times when it is not possible to give the customer exactly what he wants. Either it is not possible to provide anything at all, or it is only possible to provide a close approximation. Every solution is a compromise between budget, timescales, the capabilities of the chosen software, and the performance of the available hardware…19. The word “automatic” also means “expensive”
All too often a relatively simple system is ruined (ie: blows its budget) when the customer insists that large numbers of events are supposed to happen automatically (ie: without further manual intervention). This means that as well as having the capability of performing a particular function the software must include additional logic… Just ask a builder to install doors that open and close automatically, or lights that switch on and off automatically and watch the effect on the price…23. A computer is not an intelligent device, it is a fast idiot
There is a popular misconception that a computer has built-in intelligence. This is far from the truth – it is nothing more than a fast idiot that follows instructions. It will follow its instructions religiously, literally, without question and without deviation…
