Most acceptable

I was pulling my hair out on Sunday afternoon for about five hours to SWAG the internal development of a large database system that we can essentially buy off the shelf — and which everyone acknowledges would be better off so bought, but senior management wants to know (always) how much it would be for us to do so instead (i.e., assurance that we’re not buying a Mercedes when we could make our own Tercel).

Since every step of the process involved making an array of assumptions and generalizations (since actually scoping out the development of such a system would be a multi-week, multi-person effort, vs. the few days I had to do it by my lonesome), I couldn’t use much of our standard costing and scheduling methodology. And rather than spell out all the calculations, I simply presented a nicely formatted extract of the numbers to the Boss Man and hoped he wouldn’t ask for too much detail (since every detail would be debatable).

So I was pleased at this response:

Well this is the most acceptable “breach of process” I have ever seen. The fact that it is understandable and reasonable helps tremendously

Of course, he then proceeded to pepper me with questions, but, yay. Almost made losing four-plus hours of my Sunday worthwhile.