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When Enough … Is Enough
One of the things that was repeatedly mentioned in the whole "good enough" series is that accepting "good enough" is like settling – taking less of a solution than it could or should be. I’ve seen this – but usually this becomes an issue when it’s used as an excuse, rather than an up-front approach to getting things done. In other words, if you’re up-front about how you’ll be approaching the project – if you explain to your customer (internal or external) about constraints, time to deliver and the differences between what they may see as the ultimate solution vs what you can deliver at different time and resource committments, you may quickly find that it’s a great way to negotiate.
Many times I’ve used a $100 budget explanation for customers. I get what they’d really like to have, put it (sometimes literally) on a menu of options. I put the "cost" for each item on the menu and they can pick and choose where they want their $100 spent. Some items are easy; they cost $1. Some are more difficult, they cost $25 or whatever it works out to. This way the customer can see where they pick your priorities for work.
Another thing we done is the old "You can have it fast, cheap, right. Pick two."
Ralph wrote back in with some final thoughts:
"David said:
As I think about what the customer is requesting, I try to put it into the categories of what they want (dreaming, no limits), and what they need.
I generally use a three level categorization:
1) Gotta Have
2) Wanna Have
3) Luvta Have
The Gotta Have level is the absolute bare minimum that will get by . . . using a school type grading scale, this would be a C. It’s not a D (Deficient) nor is it an F (Failed to meet requirements) but neither is it much more than that.
The Wanna Have level is the additional features that make life easier for the user and, using the school type grading scale, gets you a B. This is a B (Better than expected) because you have foreseen some of the, "Gee, i would’ve been nice if . . . " responses and provided those little extras that don’t really impact things too much.
The Luvta Have level is the list of significant enhancements (some time pure "pie in the sky" stuff) that would have made the project go into cost and time over runs. These would get you an A on the school type grading scale . . . A for "Awesome!" . . . however, you might also get an F because of the time and cost involved.
When I was doing independent consulting (and even as when I wasn’t, for that matter), I always tried to develop at the B level as a minimum but to put in the "hooks" for moving to the A level if there was an opportunity. Sometimes the opportunity might be in the form of an add on contract and sometimes it might be in the form of an extension on the existing project time-line (usually after a careful explanation of the impact of including the Luvta Haves ;-). However, getting a working product into the users hands on time and on (or, preferably, under) budget usually trumped including the Luvta Haves."
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