No engineering project is EVER on budget. Forget about that one. And no engineering project is EVER allowed a reasonable development schedule by Marketing and Executive Management. Forget about that one too. The best you can hope for is that EVENTUALLY it actually works as intended and specified -- hopefully before the customers get tired of you and your not-quite-ready-for-prime-time product and go to the competition (if there is any).

Please note, I am not talking about Elecraft here -- rather all the companies I've ever worked for. I have never worked for Elecraft.

If I sound pessimistic and cynical, I'm really not. Those are just the realities I've encountered in 35 years in high technology companies, both small and large, as a hardware engineer and as a technical writer working intimately with hardware and software engineering groups. If any of you have actually had more positive REAL-WORLD experiences in this realm, I'd like to know where! Seriously. :-)

I've heard and read of military contractors in the World War II era like Douglas Aircraft and others bringing in a new warplane on spec, ahead of schedule, and under budget. They say it's true, and I believe it, I guess. But whatever they were doing right in those days just doesn't happen any more.

Bill W5WVO


WILLIS COOKE wrote:

I have heard it as On Time, On Spec, On Budget, pick
any two!.  This applies for any engineering project,
not just software, however, it assumes that the
schedule, budget and specification are reasonable.  If
you give marketing or upper management total control
you may be able to have only one or maybe none of the
three.

In the case of Elecraft engineering, upper management
and marketing are all the same people, so I am
counting on getting two.  I pick On Spec and On
Budget.


Willis 'Cookie' Cooke
K5EWJ
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