On Sun, 02 Feb 2014 11:03:16 +0000, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

>> If he's got a good sense of humour, maybe try "well, it doesn't herd
>> goats" - or something equally as ridiculous, and see if he picks up on
>> how broad his question is.
> 
> The usual joke is "well it doesn't have an espresso function yet".

I like it. :)

>> If he doesn't have a good sense of humour, then maybe just ask some
>> clarifying questions that point this out in a similar manner, along the
>> lines of "well, that's a pretty broad question - did you have something
>> more specific in mind?"
> 
> The trouble is, the answer will be something of the form of
> 
>    "Hey, we should get our product to do XYZ. I saw an Internet video of
> another product that does XYZ, so it shouldn't take long for us to do
> it."
> 
> There are two problems here.
> 
> First, you frequently find that what he *thinks* the product in the
> Internet video does isn't what that product *actually* does. Frequently
> he asks us to do XYZ, when that's mathematically impossible.

Then what you do is drill into details.

> Second, he has this strange delusion that if any other company, anywhere
> on Earth has done something, it must be trivial for us to do it as well.
> Never mind that some of these products have a team of hundreds of
> developers behind them; the feature *sounds* simple, so it must be easy
> for our team of 4 developers to duplicate that feature. By the end of
> this month, please?

Work up an actual estimate of the time it would take to do it.

> But the main problem, of course, is simply that, like many managers, he
> wants our product to have *every* feature. But, unlike the *good*
> managers out there, he is physiologically incapable of prioritising
> stuff. To him, *everything* has maximum priority - which isn't helpful.
> Also, he becomes obsessed with certain features because they sound cool
> and exciting, rather than because actual customers are willing to pay
> money for it.

I've worked with managers like that - and it's important in situations 
like that to learn how to manage your manager, and to manage the 
expectations.

The first company I contracted with on writing gigs was (is) owned by 
someone who is like that - every day, the feature set would change, which 
would change the documentation I was working on.  His CTO described his 
job as being "Joe's handler," and I made sure the CTO (who had contracted 
me) knew every change in product functionality made work that I'd done 
irrelevant, and that because the spec was changing - something not in my 
control - that meant the project would take more time for me to finish.

"Joe" didn't understand that, but as he was personally funding the 
company, as long as he kept paying the bills, I was fine with him 
changing the spec.

Of course, eventually he ran out of patience for the work I was doing 
(because it was never finished), and he didn't renew the contract (but 
that was OK as I had another gig lined up), and looking at the product 
today, I see very little of what he actually paid me for, because the 
product functionality has changed completely.

Oh, and 2 years later, they still don't really have a "version 1 release".

> Then again, often a customer has no interest in buying our product, so
> they will start playing a game of "Does it do X? Does it do Y? Does it
> do Z? Oh, it can't do Z? Then we won't be buying it." Which our MD takes
> as meaning "if only it could do Z, we could sell MILLIONS!" Erm, no, if
> it could do Z, the customer would simply find some other excuse to not
> buy it. There is a difference between a customer who can't use the
> product without Z, and a customer who just wants an excuse to fob you
> off with.
> 
> Then again, I am the world's foremost expert in reading people's
> intentions, so maybe I should just STFU...

It might not be good for customer A to have feature Z, but if it's a 
significant enough feature, it might entice a new customer.

Jim
-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

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