Cost Planning

• Specifications never complete and/or consistent
  • Customer knows current situation, but hard to envision what might be.
  • Customer makes (inadvertent) assumptions
  • Different clients (even within the same organization) may have different visions
• Very common for both customers and programmers to complain that requirements were unclear
  • Original costs had to be renegotiated
  • Original scope had to be revised
• First release takes 1-2 years
  • Specifications change as customer's identifies new needs
  • Laws, business climate change
  • Design decisions assume specifications
  • Coding modifications must keep up with changed specifications, design

created April 29, 2003 last revised May 13, 2003

previous   next