"Nesse, Rustin" wrote:
> >My problem with this thread is those that answer an honest
> >question posted
> >to this forum with statements like "Why would you want to do
> >that?" or "You
> >don't want to do that." or my favorite "Don't do that, its
> >stupid and not
> >the way we do things around here." Ok, I'm paraphrasing..
> >Anyway, those
> >answers are nice and short, but terribly uninformative to the
> >folks asking
> >the questions.. As someone who has received those answers in the past,
> >please at least try and explain why instead of the "we know,
> >but we're not
> >telling you because that's not Zen" answer.
>
> You're dead right on that one. Does it make good business sense to tell
> a client who WANTS another way to exit an application "It's not in the
> Palm Zen, I can't do it"? Not if you're out to lose clients, it isn't.
This is where I see the real world hit the artist colony. There is very much a middle
ground on this and I have done it with many a
client.
<soapbox>
Most clients are exploring how to use a handheld in their business when they come to
integrators and consultants like you and I,
they are willing to admit they don't know the exact implementation beyond "we want
this data in our Palms." There are exceptions to
this of the most egotistical and dictatorial clients of whom I refuse to work with --
another reason why I don't mix well with the
Hollywood machine.
I have found that what they want and what they need are sometime two totally separate
things. They tell you one thing that they
want which is some half baked solution they got in the shower. I find it is very
helpful to dig deep and discover the actual need.
This is the sign of a true problem solver.
One example of this is a client a while ago who said, "I want all my techs in the
field with Palms to get the new schedules twice a
day." Later, I went to investigate the whole need and discovered that they really
needed to get their internal scheduling process
more organized since they were wasting time, gas and labor having the techs travel
unneeded miles. Thus, they got their Palms with
the special scheduling code but most of all, their back end was cleaned up in addition.
</soapbox>
Steve
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