Professional development seminars: The horror of the frozen specification

“All that you do when you freeze the specification on a large project is to guarantee that the system you install will be obsolete!” Can you imagine actually walking into the office of your most senior user and admitting that the new Whiz-Bang System, installed only last week after a 2-year development cycle, is obsolete? How are you going to explain that you just spent $12,000,000 to build a system that is 100% in sync with last year's needs? It's hard to imagine so painful a meeting, but when we freeze a spec, what we're doing is trying to serve a dynamic environment with a fixed product. No wonder so many systems face a plague of “minor enhancements” during the first months of their operating lives. “Sure,” you say, “it's nice to talk about flexibility, but how can we ever get anything done if we can't freeze the specs? That's what this session is all about. How can you maximize flexibility without bogging the project down completely? You'll learn both technical and managerial concepts that can help you to avoid pre-implementation obsolescence and improve user satisfaction.