You will often find implementation and delivery team fretting about how the sales guys have oversold the product, have promised features and functionalities which are either not possible or simply too costly to develop / configure to justify the project financials.
For a moment consider the situation from the sales guys perspective, he has to make the sale in face of stiff competition from other vendors/partners. And anyways software is one of the most difficult products to sell, being intangible and with a long sales cycle. He has to meet his numbers right? He also has a deadline...!
Also, very few corporates seem to have the talent pool to consider all techno-commercial aspects of the project in a balanced way specifically ensuring that the vendor makes a standard profit. Mostly it is a ugly negotiation on the price. Forget a time and material project.
The truth is that you have now been handed a seemingly impossible project scope and timeline in hand and all the effect of the booz from the "project win" party is over.
What should you do?
If I may say in a single line...just like it was the job of the sales guy was to win the project, the job of the delivery team is now to make the client "go live".
To elaborate further, you will have to basically segregate the business requirements between critical and non-critical. This is easier said than done and requires a very good understanding of the client business. Of course all requests will be made out to be critical. Please ensure that all business critical requirements are taken care of and push for go live. Generally frivolous requirements vanish by themselves once the system is live. :-)
For a moment consider the situation from the sales guys perspective, he has to make the sale in face of stiff competition from other vendors/partners. And anyways software is one of the most difficult products to sell, being intangible and with a long sales cycle. He has to meet his numbers right? He also has a deadline...!
Also, very few corporates seem to have the talent pool to consider all techno-commercial aspects of the project in a balanced way specifically ensuring that the vendor makes a standard profit. Mostly it is a ugly negotiation on the price. Forget a time and material project.
The truth is that you have now been handed a seemingly impossible project scope and timeline in hand and all the effect of the booz from the "project win" party is over.
What should you do?
If I may say in a single line...just like it was the job of the sales guy was to win the project, the job of the delivery team is now to make the client "go live".
To elaborate further, you will have to basically segregate the business requirements between critical and non-critical. This is easier said than done and requires a very good understanding of the client business. Of course all requests will be made out to be critical. Please ensure that all business critical requirements are taken care of and push for go live. Generally frivolous requirements vanish by themselves once the system is live. :-)
