There’s a new MSDN show called Striking Pixels that is a “goofy” look at Microsoft’s designer offerings such as Silverlight. There was one excerpt that just cracked me up. Its shown below. The two hosts are playing two sets of characters. The first set of characters are the customers who have a very dodgy set of accents (and dodgy moustaches). The second set of characters are the designers that are providing design services to the customers. I found it so funny because earlier in the week I had a similar experience. A business partner sent over a rough set of functionality requirements for a product extension. It was only on my second pass at reading the documents that I realized the expectation was to have something ready by October 1st which was just 6 working days away at the time. So I totally get the exasperation and stunned silence shown by the designer characters in the following excerpt:
Now often as developers we can pull out all stops and do some amazing things in a short time. The problem is that this makes a rod for your own back. In other words, if the client or business partner doesn’t understand the intricacies and details of what goes on to achieve the results, their expectations are then set higher than is realistic. Bottom line: we are going to do whatever we can to meet the business needs of the business partner for their deadlines, but… I’m going to need to successfully communicate the compromises and development follow up that will be needed in the following month.