> Cost/benefit analysis. If this project is really that important, you 
> should be assigning resouces to it. If you can't do that, you can't have 
> the results. You don't get something for nothing...

Yeh you can, you just get the results but end up with buggy code that cannot 
be reused very easily in future :-)  From a managers point of view there is 
no point in getting extra resource for no visible benefit.

> Well, then the other companies get a reputation for failing to deliver a 
> quality product, and you become known as the people who take slightly 
> longer but deliver something worth the money. :-D

That's fine for frequent short projects, but for infrequent or longer 
projects (eg 5 years or so) unfortunately that never really happens.  You 
get new people, new supplier selection methods etc.  Nokia worked like this, 
in their supplier selection tables they had a column for "supplier 
confidence" where exactly what you said was take account of.  But they make 
loads of phones the whole time, someone making cars or office blocks does so 
far less frequently.

> Heh. Seriously, adding up currency without performing a conversion first? 
> This stuff isn't exactly complicated. It's about the most basic stuff 
> there is!

Try things like offering the customer some extra feature for $X, which they 
accept, then a year later they change their mind and you say "oh, that costs 
$X/2, we can take that much off the price".  Just because the person 
involved forgot what they said 1 year ago.  Customer is not happy and then 
requests detailed cost analysis of your whole product...

> Tell me, have you ever seen projects where they think "yeah, we'll design 
> and build the software, get it working, and then add security to it 
> later"?

Try, yeh we'll inform some dimensions off-the-cuff to the customer, then 
think about design later.  Or yeh we'll make the design and then think about 
EMC and thermal performance later.

> Every time I see this, unless it's a really trivial application, I can 
> practically *guarantee* that it won't work.

Ditto.

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