I often work with sales and marketing types that cannot figure out how to use Excel, let alone understand the scope of their requests from a technical perspective. Of course, it would not be fair to expect them to, but that still leaves me with a problem.
What is the best way to show marketing and sales types that they have asked for something that requires a lot of complex programming and some patience?
Could you please share examples of problems and solutions?
Could you please recommend books on this subject?
Thanks!
Break the problem up into as many sub-divided tasks as possible. Provide a per-item estimate in hours beside each one.
When they think of a project as a whole, it seems simple. However, when they see each individual thing that must be done and the number of hours each item will require, it is putting it into terms business people can understand. Suddenly the software solution they want isn’t a ‘black box’ to them anymore and they now have some insight into the process.
If you are looking for books I would suggest Software Estimation – Demystifying the Black Art.