Today I wanted to share a very interesting story that, in my opinion, demonstrates the importance of asking questions while working on the projects. This example comes from my personal experience while working at an IT department of a very large international financial institution.
My boss: “Risk Management is having problems with their desktop statistical analysis software. They are asking for an Enterprise Edition of the software and a dedicated server. Our initial ballpark estimates for this project are at $500,000 and we have neither the money in our budget, nor the resources to accomplish that. You mission is to explain to them that they are not getting this stuff in the next couple of years!”
Me (going over to the Risk Management Department): “What is the problem?”
Risk Management people: “We have to store files on the shared server because of the privacy laws and access them through our desktops. Processing times are very slow. We have to upgrade to the Enterprise Server Edition and get a new server”
Me (calling Network and Infrastructure people): “But why is the processing slow? Is it the network issue or the overloaded server?”
Network people: “We checked the network and it does not appear to be overloaded”
Infrastructure people: “Are you kidding me?! The entire building is using this server. Of course it is overloaded and slow”
Me: “So, what can we do?”
Infrastructure people: “We will give them a dedicated NT server; we have one lying around here somewhere …"
Result: The $500,000 project was diminished to a $2,000 server and 3 man-days of work-problem solved.